No sooner does Murdoch’s News Corp get into the ringtone business than the market dives. It seems dumb punters do wake up to being ripped off eventually.

Last month Rupert paid US$188 million for 51% of Jamba – the ringtone mob behind the excessively annoying Crazy Frog bought by, well, the sort of people who would have excessively annoying ringtones. The technical term for them rhymes with “banker”.

But it looks like News Corp has bought into the end of the trend. The BBC reports the mobile ring tone market will shrink by 20% in the UK this year. Says the Beeb:

Customers have grown tired of signing up for what they thought was a single download, but finding themselves facing hidden subscription charges, said MusicAlly spokesman Steve Myall.

“People have got fed up with being conned,” he said.

The popularity of phones capable of storing hundreds of songs in their entirety has also led to falling demand for ringtones.

This means customers can transfer tunes from their computers to their mobiles and use their own music collection as ringtones, rather than buying specific snippets.

Of course News Corp believes there is more to Jamba than the frog, saying at the time of the purchase that it was actually a step towards world-wide domination and luring Lachlan back into the dynasty, or something like that.