American performings rights agency BMI is predicting that the US ringtone market will exceed the US$600 million mark in 2005, US$100 million more than last year.

"We see the market maturing in 2006 with growth fueled by an increase in multimedia handsets and more aggressive marketing by wireless carriers," said BMI Vice President of Business Development, Richard Conlon. "We believe that the market will grow by 20% for the ringtone sector alone in '06. We also see 2006 as the make or break year for the ringback tone market, which is still in the novelty phase in the United States. Additional music-based revenues should be realized from mobile subscription music services, which have just begun U.S. roll out."

Since entering the market in 2001, BMI has tracked and processed more than 360,000,000 individual ringtone sales by title, artist and gross retail revenues generated. BMI's database of earnings and titles is believed to be the most comprehensive in the industry. BMI uses the data that it collects to distribute public performance royalties on a pro-rated basis to its affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers.

BMI is a non-profit organisation represents more than 300,000 artists and 6.5 million musical works worldwide.