The ringtone comeback that lived on a log axis

Dark navy deck slide, masthead “Format Desk · United States · full year 2025”, headlined “Streaming never did eat the format mix”. A subhead reads “Every format the industry still ships, at wholesale value for 2025. Twelve formats, none of them dropped, all of them on one shared axis — and the whole business fits inside four gridlines.” Twelve gold horizontal bars run against a logarithmic axis labelled 1, 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000, captioned “US wholesale revenue, $ millions (log₁₀)”: Paid Subscriptions (Premium) 5,881.1, Free Streaming 1,789.3, Other Streaming 1,309.0, Vinyl 1,042.9, Paid Subscriptions (Non-Premium) 495.2, Synchronization 407.1, CD 312.4, Download Album 111.0, Download Single 110.8, Other Digital 46.7, Other Physical 25.8 and, in teal at the bottom, Ringtones & Ringbacks 4.16. Because the axis is logarithmic the bars form a gentle staircase rather than a cliff, and a teal callout beside the last one reads “$4.16 million, and still a sixth of the way across”. Three stat cards down the right side read 12 of 12 formats still earning, 6 : 1 longest bar to shortest end to end — “the entire spread of the American music business” — and $11.5B total US recorded-music revenue in 2025. A gold note box headed “The long tail is alive” argues that no single format has run away with the business and that even two million ringtones clear a sixth of the leader’s bar; under it, in small grey type, “Axis: log₁₀, bars measured from a $1M floor.” A footnote credits the RIAA Year-End 2025 Revenue Report and calls the slide a Format Desk demonstration deck. — Showing the misleading chart

The same twelve numbers on a cream background, kicked “The same twelve formats · one linear axis from zero” and headlined “Half the business is a single line item”. Blue bars run against a linear axis from 0 to 6,000 US dollars in millions: Paid Subscriptions (Premium) fills the chart, labelled inside the bar “51.0% of all US recorded-music revenue”, while Free Streaming 1,789.3, Other Streaming 1,309.0 and Vinyl 1,042.9 reach roughly a fifth of it, Synchronization and CD are stubs, and the last four formats are hairlines. The gold Ringtones & Ringbacks bar at the bottom is a single pixel, marked by a rule and the note “$4.16 — one pixel wide, and that is the honest length”. Three cards sit down the right. “The floor is a setting” explains that a log axis has no zero so a bar drawn on one has to start somewhere, and shows the same two numbers redrawn at three axis floors: with the floor at $1M the ringtone bar covers 15% of the chart, at $0.10M 32%, at $0.01M 44%, while the premium-subscription bar creeps only from 94% to 96%. “What a sixth of a bar was worth” gives $4.16 million of ringtones against $5,881.1 million of premium subscriptions — 1,414× apart, drawn six times apart — and notes ringtones are 0.036% of the $11.5 billion American recorded-music business, about two million of them at roughly two dollars each. “A log scale is for dots, not bars” explains that a dot marks a position the axis can define, while a bar promises its length is the number. A footnote credits the RIAA Year-End 2025 Revenue Report, notes that RIAA moved to wholesale value in that report so the figures are not comparable with its retail-value series through 2024, and says both drawings are our own. — Showing the misleading chart

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Twelve American recorded-music formats, drawn as bars on an axis running $1M, $10M, $100M, $1,000M, $10,000M. Ringtones and ringbacks took $4.16 million in 2025 — one 1,414th of what premium subscriptions took — and the bar reaches a sixth of the way across, close enough to read as a going concern. Redraw the same twelve numbers from zero and that bar is one pixel wide.

RIAA Year-End 2025 Revenue Report — United States wholesale dollar value, $ millions, net after returns (published March 2026), 2025Added August 12, 2026

01The claim

Streaming never did eat the format mix. Here is every format the American recorded-music business still ships, at wholesale value for 2025, with nothing dropped and nothing rounded away: twelve formats on one shared axis, and the whole industry fits inside four gridlines. Premium subscriptions lead, but nothing has run away with the business — free streaming, other streaming, vinyl, sync, CDs and downloads all land within a bar’s length of each other, and even the smallest line on the sheet, two million ringtones and ringbacks, clears a sixth of the leader’s bar. Longest to shortest, the entire spread of the American music business is about six to one. The long tail is alive.

02The trick

Every number on the slide is RIAA’s, printed at the end of its own bar, and the axis is not hiding: it is labelled 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, the caption says log₁₀ in as many words, and the fine print admits the bars are measured from a $1M floor. It fools the eye anyway, because a bar chart makes a promise the axis cannot keep. A bar encodes its value as length from zero, and a logarithmic axis has no zero — each gridline is a multiplication by ten, so the four gridline widths the slide calls “the entire spread of the business” are a factor of 10,000. Premium subscriptions took $5,881.1 million and ringtones took $4.16 million, 1,414 times apart; the bars come out at 94% and 15% of the track, six times apart. That 6:1 badge is the tell sitting in plain sight — a ratio of bar lengths quoted as if it were a ratio of dollars. The second half of the trick is that the bar lengths are not even a property of the data. Because the axis has no zero, where it starts is a setting: keep the floor at $1M and the ringtone bar runs 15% of the way across, drop it to $0.10M and the same $4.16 million runs 32%, drop it to $0.01M and it runs 44%, while the leader’s bar creeps only from 94% to 96%. Nothing about ringtones changed; the fine print did. (This exhibit is our own demonstration, drawn in the house style of an industry format review from RIAA’s published table — no such deck was published.)

03The fix

Draw the same twelve numbers from zero on a linear axis and the staircase becomes what the table always said. Premium subscriptions are 51.0% of the $11.5 billion; all four streaming lines together are 82.1%; vinyl — the loudest comeback story in music, and a genuine one, up 9.3% on the year to $1,042.9 million — is 9.0%; and the seven formats that are neither streaming nor vinyl share 8.8% between them. The ringtone bar is 0.036% of the business, about two million ringtones at roughly two dollars each, and at the width the honest chart is drawn it is one pixel long. The long tail is real; it is just very short. None of which makes log scales dishonest. Twelve formats spanning three orders of magnitude is exactly the problem they exist to solve — but for dots, not bars. A dot marks a position, and a log axis can define a position perfectly well; a bar promises that its length is the number, and on a log axis its length is whatever the floor was set to. If the small formats deserve a look, give them their own chart at their own scale and the reader gets both facts at once: ringtones still exist, and they are a rounding error. The habit worth keeping is a two-second one — read the axis numbers before reading the bars, and if they go 1, 10, 100 rather than 1, 2, 3, stop measuring lengths and start reading labels.