Short History of Cellphone Ringtones

RobotWisdom writes "This week's New Yorker magazine includes an interesting short history of cellphone ringtones, including statistics on their (huge) profitability worldwide. My favorite quote: 'I spent three days of productive work time listening to polyphonic ringtone versions of speed metal, trying to find exactly the ringtone that expressed my personality with enough irony and enough coolness that I could live with it going off ten times a day. In a quiet room, in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off-- what are they going to hear?'"

One more reason to hate Verisign...

[Anonymous Coward]

Crazy Frog [wikipedia.org].

Ringtone Study

[moofdaddy]

This is an interesting article, there seems to be a growing intrigue into ringtones. Recently i read about a study being done at Cornell with ring tones. Users are being studied for a year and they are trying to determine what goes into people's decisions to buy a certain ringtone. I guess this is really becoming a huge business.

Re:The only ringtone needed EVAR

[RaguMS]

Vibrate.

I thought that the polyphonic ringtones that vibrated to the baseline of the song were pretty neat - until I learned that people not only actually used them, but also paid money for them.

Re:The ringtone craze

[almost-empty]

You certianly have a good point, if you are walking around a store (say walmart for example) and you hear someones cell phone ringing a new stock ringtone, you can see like 10 people reach for the phones to make sure if its them. For some reason, a friends father checks his phone after hearing any ring, guess he'll never miss a call that way, lol.

Re:A shorter history of ringtones

[BubbleDragon]

*shudders* And it's even worse with someone non-technical driving the whole thing.

Last night at a restaurant, a woman in about her late 40s stopped the waitress every time she passed, asking about how to save this, or what's this mean, and "Get this bird off my screen!" Then she proceeded to scroll through every different ring tone possibility at the highest volume for 20 minutes. All the while grinning, and oblivious to the concept that everyone else in the place had adopted a bit of a nervous tick.

And they bitch about my generation being socially inept.

Re:Ringtones are one of the dumbest things to pay

[slashkitty]

Tell me about it. I thought noone actually would buy them. However, it ends up that it's easy to buy, just enter a few sms numbers, and it gets tacked onto your cellphone bill.

I just started a ringtones on my site last month. I've already sold over 3000 ringtones in over 50 countries. I'd say that ringtone sales are going strong.

Re:Whats next?

[spywarearcata.com]

Hey, how about a cell phone vibration mode which simulates an Oscillon so that slowly the loose pens, clips and paper on the meeting table begin forming interesting patterns...

Vibrating

[Douglas Simmons]

It makes sense that there's a big market for ring tones because it is so annoying to hear someone's phone go off in a restaurant, auditorium, train, date, well anywhere. To not be that guy, many put their phones on vibrate. The thing is, these phones vibrate so vigorously that the sound of the vibration, even muted from being snugged up against someone's ass, is quite audible from a distance and not much less annoying than Fur Elise. It is an interruption of basically equal annoyance when someone starts vibrating in the middle of a lecture; and it is my theory that it is not necessarily the sound that pisses people off so much, but it is that the person neglected to turn their phone off before the class and the disrespect of their not having done that. I can handle these ringtones of recordings of regular bell ringing phones. Simple and subtle. But if I'm going to hear some pop song, it'd better be really funny for it to outweigh the annoyance.

My point is, in addition to the advent of new ringtone technology, cell phone manufacturers should conduct research and development to allow people to set the intensity of their phone's vibration to a point that the phone's vibrating is as quiet as possible while shaking hard enough for the person to feel it. This cannot be the same setting for all people due to bodyfat variations, so it has to be adjustable. C'mon, science!

Cellphone in a restaraunt experience

[SithLordOfLanc]

I was out to dinner with my wife. I almost always have my phone on vibrate and did this night. Well the phone "rang" and I excused myself to go take the call in the bar area. The guy at the table wandered in a minute or two later to have a smoke (you can't smoke in the restaraunt proper in my area, only the bar). When I had finished up my call, the guy actualy came over and thanked me for leaving the restaraunt area to take the call.

Re:The sound of silence

[sg3000]

> At the very most, they might hear my phone's vibration

My phone is always in vibrate mode, unless it's plugged into a wall charger and stuck on my dresser for the night. I can think of few things more annoying or unprofessional than an obtrusive ring tone.

One person at work I knew believes she is a Very Important Person, but she didn't want to carry her phone on her (too bulky, I assume). So she turned up the ringer to a distinctive song set to its loudest volume and put the damn thing on vibrate. When the phone went off, the cacophony of noises would be accompanied by the phone vibrating so violently that it would start whirling around the desk like a dervish. All conversation would stop as people would stared shocked at her cell phone.

For teenagers, I guess it's fine to use obnoxious ring tones -- it's probably analogous to people of my generation in college having annoying answering machine messages with popular songs or samples from a TV show (ho ho! My answering machine message is George from Seinfeld singing "Believe it or not, George isn't at home") or something.

Re:I am baffled.

[DeckardJK]

Maybe its because people like to have a little fun. Sure... we could all use the same ringtone and life would be great, however; there is a little enjoyment to be gained out of hearing your friend's cellphone crank out ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man" or something else kinda funny.

I know ringtones in certain places are annoying... but its beyond me how links to pictures of souped up computers on /. are the coolest thing ever, however; when it comes to pop culture and fashion anything other than the bare minimum is deemed unneccesary or too trendy.

Re:I am baffled.

[SnprBoB86]

"I guess it's the same people that blare their radio in the car with the windows rolled all the way down."

That is an interesting comment...

Personally, I hate ringtones, but I love to rock out real loud with the wind pouring in the windows on a nice fall or spring day.

The difference is that when I get to a red light, I lower the volume.

I guess it's the same people who leave their phone on loud durring a meeting who don't lower their radio when it could be annoying other people.

Re:I am baffled.

[Daytona955i]

While I do use vibrate a lot, I also like to have it ring certain times. That being the case I like to distinguish my cell phone from the millions of others around me. I've yet to hear someone with the same ringtone as me. (Of course I made it myself which helps)

Re:The sound of silence

[KevinDean]

How feasible is a pocket cell-phone jammer? I can't tell you how much I would love to be able to jam the transmissions of those I encounter daily who use cell phones at all sorts of rude times and places. If I could build one from an old cell phone or something, I'd do it in a minute.

Re:This Story is about PHONES!!

[RubberChainsaw]

I'm showing my niavete here, but.. whats the first one?

Re:The only ringtone needed EVAR

[SomeGuyFromCA]

video game ringtones are probably at just the right point of retro-ness and irony to work really well.

i used to have the whistle sound from zelda 1 as my ringtone. short, clean, not an earworm, and distinctive.

Re:The only ringtone needed EVAR

[jerkychew]

Sorry man, but I've got the zelda ringtone, and it's the cat's ass. Plus, my treo plays MIDI files directly, so I downloaded the tone for free and imported it from my memory card.

People get pissed off when I answer my phone before they can figure out what the tone is.

Re:How to create a video game ringtone!

[Doppler00]

Okay, for those interested here is how you go about doing this (CORRECTLY!):

1. Get a decent cellphone that supports WAV or MP3's as ring tones.

2. Download Winamp

3. Go here [zophar.net] for winamp plugins that emulate NES games.

4. And some emulated music [zophar.net] of course:

5. Play song in winamp, use the Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in to generate a wave file

6. Edit in your favorite WAV editor to get a 30 second clip and save as MP3/WAV.

7. Save it to your phone. Sending it via bluetooth is easiest.

So there you go. No $2.50 charge for a ring tone. Takes some work, but it's WELL worth it.