New Coldplay tune debuts as Cingular ringtone

To hear the newest Coldplay song right now, don’t turn on the radio or flip to MTV. Instead, you’ll have to download a 30-second track to your cell phone and set it as your ring.

In another statement of how technology has turned the music industry every which way, Coldplay’s single “Speed of Sound” is available for download through Cingular Wireless.

That happened almost a week before its radio debut Monday and almost two months before the British alternative rock group’s new album, “X&Y,” is released on June 7.

The idea of debuting a song as a ringtone and not over the airwaves may signal a big step for the music industry, given how heavily it has relied on radio and television. Its willingness to do so also gives more credibility to the ringtone market, which has returned wallet-bursting revenues.

“It was sacrosanct previously to get it out on radio first because it was perceived to be the biggest,” said Roger Entner, a wireless analyst with Ovum. “But now they feel more served by bringing it out with a large (wireless) carrier.”

The ringtone is part of a new Cingular service called Cingular Sounds, which allows subscribers first crack at songs – as ringtones – before or at the same time as they debut elsewhere.

Coldplay is said to be the first to debut a song through a major partner such as Cingular, the largest wireless carrier in the United States with 50 million subscribers.

As part of the service, the Atlanta-based company will send users weekly text messages alerting them to a list of artists participating in the program. More artists and musical styles are expected to be added in coming weeks.

At $1.99 to $2.50 for each song, the ringtone market continues to grow substantially. Entner said he expects the industry to record $340 million in sales in the United States this year, racing to $1.3 billion by 2009.

Entner said it’s not only cold, hard cash for Coldplay, but also a new advertising medium.

“From Coldplay’s perspective, they make money on this, not only from the ringtone royalties, but also from album sales – it’s another advertising channel,” he said.

But Andrew Harms, music director and evening DJ at Seattle’s KNDD-FM, called it “the most ridiculous thing I ever heard in my entire life. It’s comical and slightly weird.”

Using a 30-second download played on a cell phone to promote a song could distort the quality and give a different impression of what the song is about, he said.

Harms said he didn’t understand why a record label would introduce a song that wasn’t in “the most complete, high-quality form.”

“It’s an injustice to the artist to hear them on the cell phone,” he said. “There must be a good deal of money involved.”