Muzicall, which provides Ringback Tone (RBT) services in Europe, has raised 9 million (8.2 Million) in its latest round of funding, which sees existing investors BlueRun Ventures and Thule joined by Orkos Capital, Veddis Ventures and GP Bullhound.
Muzicall provides outsourced, end-to-end RBT services to many of Europes leading operators, including Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile. The company says the funding will enable it to further implement its vision of making RBTs usually a piece of music that replaces the ringing   sound a caller hears before their phone call is answered available to all European mobile phone users.
The completion of this round of funding puts us in an excellent position to expand throughout Europe and demonstrate that the huge revenues RBTs are delivering for operators in Asia and the US can be realised here too, says CEO Patrick Allainguillaume. Only about 2% of European mobile users currently have a ringback tone; in parts of Asia that number is approximately 40-50%. Our unique approach enables RBTs to be sold through many sales channels, including the big direct-to-consumer brands, and exponentially increase awareness and sales by using the mass market media power of these mobile content sellers. Using this strategy, we believe that we can rapidly raise the penetration rate for RBTs in Europe.
The completion of Muzicalls funding follows a report from market research consultancy, MultiMedia Intelligence, which says that RBTs will drive the mobile premium content market, which is expected to triple in value to $4.7 billion (2.8 billion) by 2012. Likewise, analysts IDC predict that ringback tones will overtake ringtones in 2010 and become the single largest revenue source for mobile entertainment.
While RBTs typically consist of music, the customer can also choose from movie clips, TV show theme tunes, sound effects and numerous other sounds. Muzicalls RBT.4.ALL platform enables customers to create their own content library, giving them the ability to assign a different tune for different callers, creating a rich and personalised experience.