Within the global mobile content industry, there’s one big standout—ringback tones, which are the songs that play while someone waits for you to pick up the phone, according to a report released today by Multimedia Intelligence, a research and consulting firm. Frank Dickson, MultiMedia’s Chief Research Officer: “Ringback tones are the most interesting. There’s a lot of demand for them. People like the fact that they can personalize the call with a track that reflects their personality.” Likewise, they are popular with the music labels and the network operators because “ringback tones are the most protected class of all the music classes. It’s inherently impossible to steal and pirate because it’s resident in the operator’s network. The only way to get that is to purchase access to that. In that way, it’s the savor of the music industry.”

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Highlights from the report:

—The global premium mobile content market (excluding mobile video and TV) is expected to increase from $17 billion in 2007 to $29 billion in 2012.

—Ringback tones are expected to increase from more than $1 billion in 2007 to $4.7 billion in 2012. At this level, the ringback tone market will be just shy of the mobile games industry, Dickson said.

—Full track music: “It’s in trouble,” Dickson said. He said that the problem is being highlighted with the iPhone. If a handset has an open portal to the Internet, why should people pay for protected DRM songs, when they can get pirated music on to the phone. “Pirating becomes possible when phones have access to the Internet,” he said.