Empowering people to create their own ringtones from templates or mashups from their own audio files is a brilliant concept, if you can get it right.

It has a number of real benefits for users. Clearly, there’s loads of demand for ringtones. The end product is very viral as all their friends (and anyone else in earshot) get to hear the finished results. It’s something kids talk about to each other too - most of them are obsessed with tones anyway (spot the huge generalisation). And the incumbent providers are pricing their products far too expensively - how Napster can possibly justify selling a whole track for 99c and a part-track (aka a ringtone) for $1.99, beats me. Napster is also selling tones at one of the most competitive price points in the market.

The final benefit of allowing users to create their own tones is that you’re catering to the very reason that they’re using tones in the first place - it’s about self-expression and personalisation. With their own unique tones, they won’t be just another kid in the pub with the latest Green Day or 50 Cent ringtone. It might actually feature 50 Cent, but it’ll be their own mashup - which could be pretty damn cool.

So it’s interesting to see the launch of the Ringtone Media Studio, from Avanquest Software. This allows you to download the software you need to  create and remix your own tones. But there’s also a bonus as you can make wallpaper (another huge and profitable content sector) and edit video samples too.

This means for a one-off cost of $19.95 for downloading the software, you never need to hand over another cent to mobile content sellers. There a free trial here.

We’re going to see a lot more of these types of product as the mobile content market implodes. I wonder if it’s an exaggeration to ponder if ringtones could be one of the shortest multi-million dollar market sectors ever? Start-up to boom back to bust in less than 10 years? Hmm… we’ll see, though there’s plenty of profit to be had in traditional tones in the meantime.

The one area I wonder about with the Avanquest model is if they couldn’t be a little more creative with the pricing model. Why not try a web-based subscription model, where for say, $2.99 a month, you get 5 tones and 5 wallpapers, as an example. It’s just that with kids, a one off, high priced download cost might prove to be a little more that they’re prepared to, or can afford to, pay.

Story via Mobile Burn.