July 10, 2005
The Nokia Fugue in G Major
Forget about tinkly versions of Top 40 hits. Now composers write music specifically for cellphones.
"Downloadable ringtones - tunes from artists like the Yin Yang Twins and 50 Cent - have been a teenage mainstay for years, a mushrooming market worth almost $5 billion globally (the United States share is $600 million and growing).
Now industry executives and musicians alike have realized that they need not be duplicates of already popular songs; there is room for creativity alongside the commerce.
"We definitely see a market for original content," said Andy Volanakis, president and chief officer of Zingy, a ringtone provider that has released an album by the producer Timbaland.
When combined with technology that allows them to sound like music instead of its tinny shadow, and programs that allow anyone to make, mix or otherwise devise his or her own ringtones, the seven songs on the Timbaland album - among the first meant to be played on a phone, not a radio or CD player - suggest that ring tones are not merely a new money-maker; they are a new art form.
"Like so much technology before it, then, the cellphone has morphed far beyond its original function. "A phone used to ring just to get your attention," Mr. Levin said. Now, said Patrick Parodi, chairman of Mobile Entertainment Forum, a London-based trade association, "it's probably the device that identifies us most, along with our cars."
For musicians, the ringtone also presents an irresistible opportunity to connect with fans. Customization is growing daily: consumers can now choose what part of Fabolous's single "Baby" they want as their ringtone; previously, record companies made those kinds of decisions.
"The direction we're going in is you'd actually have this artist create the ringtone when your boyfriend calls, or your best friend," said Amy Doyle, vice president for music programming at MTV, which helped release the Timbaland album. "So it becomes the artist scoring your life, almost, on your cellphone."
According to Edward Bilous, a professor at the Juilliard School, "Ringtones are pointing towards a kind of new interactive media in which the user and the creator have a more democratic relationship with each other."
From the The New York Times
Related:
-- Ringtone Market - Here you'll find professional musicians and composers (indexed by alaphabet or by country), capable of writing any ringtone from scratch or from a given source.
-- ProTones - Ringtones made by award winning composers - A couple of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nominated composers who became fed up with the poor quality of ring tones of film and tv sound tracks have decided to have a go themselves.
-- M3 Ringtone Composer - Irene Jepsen is a ringtone composer from Denmark.
-- An artificially intelligent ringtone composer - Heresy uses AI composition techniques to generate a tune in the selected style from a random number or from a phone number.
-- Original Ringtones By Martin Plante - Martin Plante is touted as "the world's first ringtone artist to compose music exclusively for cell phones".
-- Boy George, first ringtone composer - Boy George, pop icon of the 80s, singer, composer, producer and disk jokey all- in-one, was the first ringtone composer for cell phones. His first title was called "Sonic Trigger Ringtone" and was available exclusively to UK Vodafone subscribers.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/ringtonia/archives/2005/07/009009.htm