Pop Music MARCH 7, 2005 ISSUE
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`Ring My Bell
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`The expensive pleasures of the ringtone.
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`BY SASHA FRERE-JONES
`
`In 1997, your cell phone could make two kinds of sounds. It could "ring"-our
`anachronistic word for the electronic trill that phones produce when you receive a call-or it
`could play a single-line melody, like "Fur Elise." If you've ever heard a cell phone bleep out
`Beethoven without the harmony, you'll understand that this wasn't much of a choice. At about
`this time, Nokia, the Finnish cell-phone company, introduced "smart messaging," a protocol that
`allowed people to send text messages to one another over their phones, and Vesa-Matti
`Paananen, a Finnish computer programmer, realized that it would work equally well for
`transmitting bits of songs. Paananen developed software called Harmonium that enabled people
`to program their cell phones to make musically complex sequences-melodies with rudimentary
`harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment-that they could forward to friends using smart
`messagmg.
`
`Those familiar with Linux, the freely available, open-source operating system developed
`by Linus Torvalds, another Finnish programmer, will not be shocked to learn that Paananen, in a
`nationally consistent fit of altruism, put Harmonium on the Internet for anyone to download, thus
`passing up a shot at becoming a billionaire. Companies called aggregators, which collect and
`distribute digital content, capitalized on Paananen' s innovation, using his software to create what
`is today known as the polyphonic ringtone: a small packet of code that plays the phone as if it
`were a music box, producing a synthesized approximation of a song that often sounds less like
`the original it emulates than a gremlin making merry inside a video game. Recently, the
`polyphonic ringtone acquired a competitor. Called a master tone, or true tone, it is a compressed
`snippet of actual recorded song, and emanates from the cell-phone handset as if from a tiny
`radio.
`
`Ringtones of either variety cost about two dollars and are typically no more than twenty(cid:173)
`five seconds long. Nevertheless, according to Consect, a marketing and consulting firm in
`Manhattan, ringtones generated four billion dollars in sales around the world in 2004. The United
`States accounted for only three hundred million of these dollars, although Con sect predicts that
`the figure will double this year. Fabrice Grinda, the C.E.O. of Zingy, a company in New York
`that sells ringtones and cell-phone games, told me that in parts of Asia ringtones now outsell
`some types ofCDs. "In 2004, the Korean ringtone market was three hundred and fifty million
`dollars, while the CD market for singles was just two hundred and fifty million," Grinda said.
`
`But America is catching up. Anyone who watches MTV has probably seen ads for a
`company called Jamster.com, which sells polyphonic ringtones as well as cruder, monophonic
`versions for older handsets. For a small fee (about six dollars a month), you can buy ringtones
`from Jamster by entering numerical codes on your phone's keypad. This method is popular in
`Europe and is generally faster than the standard American approach: using your phone's Web
`browser to scroll through pages of song titles. Most companies allow you to sample a tone before
`
`Verizon Wireless
`Exhibit 1016-0001
`
`

`

`you buy it, but not all ringtones are compatible with all cell phones, so don't get too excited if
`your favorite band is offering ringtones on its Web site. The song snippets may work only on that
`old phone you gave away to your nephew.
`
`Consect reports that fifty-six per cent of the ringtones bought in the United States during
`the first half of2004 were hip-hop, and Mark Preiser, Consect's C.E.O., says that the vast
`majority ofringtone users are under the age of thirty. Teens like to assign different ringtones to
`different callers: something classical for Mom, an old hip-hop song for the roommate, a more
`recent track for the new boy in town. Since teens are fond of both hip-hop and cell phones, and
`have more friends than parents, it's no wonder that hip-hop ringtones rule. Of course, what's
`available to customers determines what they'll buy. Marketers in the mobile-media industry call
`these purchases "preferences." And they are right: ringtones, like the screen savers and plastic
`face plates that you can use to customize your phone, constitute a form of self-expression,
`though what you choose to tell the world about yourself is limited by a finite library of images
`and sounds.
`
`A kid I met on the subway told me that his mother doesn't like his new 50 Cent ringtone,
`"Candy Shop," not because it features explicitly sexual rhymes but because it's not as cool as "In
`Da Club," a previous 50 Cent ringtone, which received Bi II board's first Ri ngtone of the Year
`award, in 2004. A karate teacher in his thirties tal d me that he spends ten dollars a month on
`ringtones, and currently has about twenty, most of them polyphonic renditions of LEd Zeppelin
`SJngs. An archi tEd in her mi d-thi rti es said, " I spent three days of productive work time I i steni ng
`to polyphonic ringtoneversions of speed metal, trying to find exactly the ringtonethat expressed
`my perSJnal i ty with enough irony and enough cool ness that I caul d I i ve 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?'
`
`The ri ngtone al SJ teaches us how SJngs work. Wli ch clip best exemplifies a SJng? Did
`the ringtone' s maker selECt the right bit? Do you even need to hear the singing? Perhaps the part
`of the SJng that arouses our I i zard brain is the instrumental opening. It may be stranger and
`more sublime to hear a polyphonic impression of George Michael' s voice than to I i sten to the
`real thing one more time. If a SJng can survive being transposa:Hrom live instruments to a cell(cid:173)
`phone microchip, it must have musically hardy DNA Many rocent hip-hop SJngs make terrific
`ringtones bocausethey already SJund like ringtones. The polyphonic and master-toneversions of
`"Goodies," by Ciara, for example, are nearly identical. Ringtones, it turns out, are inherently
`pop: musical expression distillEd to one urgent, representative hook. As ringtones bocome part of
`our environment, they could push pop music toward new levels of concision, repetition, and
`catchiness.
`
`Verizon Wireless
`Exhibit 1016-0002
`
`