News : Akon Recalls “Making So Much” Money From Ringtone Sales

Akon recently reflected on the profits he was raking in from ringtone sales during an appearance on Drink Champs. He says that in the mid-2000s, he was “making so much” money on the sales that he took it into account when making songs.

“What made me a little bit different was, I was a businessman first,” he began on the podcast. “I’m looking at how much singles we selling, but then, the ringtones — everywhere I’d go, I would hear songs on people’s phones! And I said, ‘Yo, how much are you paying for that?’ They said, ‘$4.99.’ I said, ‘Damn! That’s for a couple of seconds? And we selling singles for $1.99 for four minutes?!’”

Akon At The MTV EMAs

Akon says his attorney realized that the term “ringtone” didn’t appear in his contract, so he went all in on their production. Soon he was earning millions off of “Smack That,” “Lonely” and “I Wanna Love You.” This strategy didn’t sit well with record labels. “So then I started making music specifically for the phone,” he continued. “‘Cause it’s $4.99 for a few seconds! Any basic businessman will tell you that’s where the money is! So every song that we were releasing was very ringtone-friendly, especially ‘Mr. Lonely.’ So then we put the records out, but we would always make ringtone versions — different parts of the song we would chop up. That was my main focus; I didn’t care about the singles. Every record I produced, I made sure it was ringtone-friendly.”

Akon Speaks With N.O.R.E. & DJ EFN

His label then tried to slip the word “digital” into his deal to get a claim on the ringtone profits. “They tried to slip that digital language in. I said, ‘Uh uh! That’s a separate deal altogether,’” he recalled. “At that time, I was in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most ringtones sold ever. I mean, above Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, The Beatles — it didn’t matter, we trumped everybody. So we just waited.” Check out Akon’s full recollection of the strategy in the video above.