The word on the proverbial street is that most major wireless carriers are balking at Motorola's and Apple's coming iTunes handset, refusing to carry the device when it hits retail because they want their subscribers to download songs over the air, directly to their phones. The iTunes phone would instead allow customers to download songs to a PC or Mac and then copy them to their handsets, effectively cutting wireless operators out of the revenue stream. The argument against that business model makes sense, but the carriers' response doesn't. They want to build their own music stores and reportedly charge consumers between $2 and $3 per download, roughly the going rate of ringtones. But as absurd as it may seem at first blush, comparing full-length songs to 30-second ringtones is like comparing apples (the fruit, not the company) and oranges: Just because consumers will pay $3 for a portion of a song doesn't mean they'll fork over the same amount for the whole thing. If there is a precedent for ringtones, it's overpriced concert T-shirts — both are all about personalization. Ringtones are shorthand for consumers to explain to the world within earshot who they are — for the teens that dominate this market, you can't put a price-tag on what that means. But there is a much more direct precedent for music downloads, and Apple has already set the bar by charging 99¢ per song. For a full 12-song album, that's a little less than $12, about the same price the album would cost at traditional brick-and-mortar retail. Downloading the same recording from your wireless carrier would set you back anywhere from $24 to $36, however — the economics make no sense. Carriers are presumably anticipating that the benefits of downloading songs regardless of time and place will supersede sticker shock, but overpricing is exactly what landed the traditional music industry in such dismal financial shape. Making the old Motown hit “Money (That's What I Want)” available at $1 instead of $2 or $3 is a much more sensible way of influencing consumers to follow the lyrics and hand over their cash.