APP DEVELOPERS START PETITION FOR CUSTOM SMS ALERTS ON APPLE IPHONE

iPhone users now have the opportunity to voice their opinion in a new online petition to Apple requesting custom SMS alert sounds. The petition was launched online on 25th October 2010.

Currently Apple restricts the ability of users to add their own audio files (custom sounds) as SMS alerts to the iPhone. This is in stark contrast to other mobile phone manufacturers.

CellBubble Pty Ltd, a newcomer to Apple’s burgeoning iPhone developer community, is the petition organiser and has set a target of 100,000 signatures.

There are 48 signatures at the time of this post.

Read more.

Crying Baby Ringtone to deter teen pregnancy

To help fight teen pregnancy, Milwaukee has launched school programs and aggressive awareness campaigns - that are working.

According to Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee's teen birthrate - "the second highest in the nation less than a decade ago- is dropping at a pace that could put it near the much lower state average by 2015, according to data released Wednesday by public health officials".

One of the campaign ideas that caught my eye. A new fake ringtone of a crying baby to get the message across about teen pregnancy.

Related: babycanwait website.

Trick Or Treat: Halloween Is Calling You

NPR tells you where to go for Halloween ringtones.

This link from iTunes: Haunted Halloween Ringtones – Scary Sounds and Halloween Music.

And don't forget to dress up your phone.

Music Licensing Group, Mobile Carriers Close to Royalty Deal, Lawyers Say

A licensing organization is near a settlement with two of the largest mobile-phone companies on payments for music over wireless devices, lawyers for both sides said in court, reports Bloomberg.

ASCAP, Verizon Communications Inc. and Ericsson Inc. are close to an agreement, their lawyers said today at a hearing in New York. Ascap hasn’t reached agreement with another carrier, AT&T Inc., its lawyer said.

Read full article.

Spooky Tunes iPhone App for Email Alerts

Spooky Tunes iphone app makes your iPhone part of the Halloween celebrations with its own distinctive Halloween email alert sounds. From cackles to thumps and bumps - you'll know when you've got mail.

When you run SpookyTones, you will receive a special email address @mailtones.net. Forward A COPY of your email to that address and any mail you receive will make your iPhone howl with your chosen tone.

Safe for Work ringtones

Now you can receive your calls without disturbing your coworkers. They won't hear a thing.

Safe for Work (SFW) Ringtones are 20 non musical ringtones that are meant to be used in a workplace setting. They blend into the background of a typical office environment by using sounds that are found in most people's work environment every day (such as staplers, keyboards, pen clicks and so on).

The ringtones are free, but unfortunately there is no way to sample them before downloading.

Mobile, Not Net, Drives Indian Music Sales

For the music industry, the mobile phone, not the Internet, is becoming a huge driver of sales as India’s 670 million wireless subscribers slowly become accustomed to using their handsets for more than just calls. Mobile phones aren’t as susceptible to digital piracy as PCs, because wireless carriers can tightly control what content they sell.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Capo song-learning app comes to iPhone

Capo is a song-learning app for the iPhone, that helps you learn to play the music in your iPod.

By slowing down the music without affecting its pitch, you can learn to play it slowly, and then speed it up as you improve. You can drop markers at key points in the song, and set loop points to repeat them.

Read a rave review in MacWorld.

Angry Birds Tones

Can’t get enough Angry Birds? As if the movie and toys weren’t enough to ruffle your feathers, you can also download Angry Birds SMS tones in Cydia for free.

[via iPhone Download Blog]

Read how

Music Streaming is a EUR 1.1 Bn Opportunity for European Operators in 2011

Large mobile operators could add millions of euros to their bottom line by partnering with a music streaming service, according to the findings of a research project between Informa Telecoms & Media and Spotify.

[via Cellular News]

Muzicall and Warner Music Announce Pan-European Ringback Tone Partnership

Muzicall, Europe’s leading provider of ringback tone (RBT) services, has signed a pan-European deal with Warner Music Group to make the record company’s catalogue of music available as ringback tones to millions of mobile phone users.

Muzicall’s deal with Warner Music Group will allow ringback tone customers to play music from Warner Music Group’s impressive roster of global superstars and up and coming talent.

Unlike ringtones, ringback tones are not downloaded by the consumer to their handset. Instead, a customer’s ringback tones reside on the server of his or her mobile phone operator. This ensures that ringback tones cannot be pirated, which makes it an ideal channel for the music industry.

Ringback tones typically consist of music, however, the customer can also choose from movie clips, TV show theme tunes, sound effects and numerous other sounds. Customers can have an unlimited amount of tunes in their collection with the ability to assign a tune t o different callers, creating a rich and personalised experience.

Full press release by e-mail.

Former music label boss: beat piracy by selling albums for £1

Would musicians make more money selling more copies of albums at a fraction of the current price? Or does dirt-cheap music simply devalue the product art? [via arstechnica]

The former head of Warner Music in the UK, Rob Dickins, threw some gasoline onto this burning question last week at a music conference. Dickins suggested that albums should go for as little as £1, or just a bit more than the current iTunes price for individual tracks.

In his view, the key is to make music purchases a no-brainer—an impulse purchase. The idea is that even those with some casual interest in a band might snap up a new release when priced at a buck or two.

Read full article

New York band plays a subway gig using nothing but iPhones

Last week, a band sang a likely unfamiliar tune, as part of an impromptu concert on a New York City subway train.

[via engadget]

Links to other cell phone concerts/performances.

New iPhone apps are changing how music is marketed and made

The latest promise of a revolutionary app comes from an unexpected source: Adam Perry, drummer for British punk-pop group A and, more recently, the Bloodhound Gang – those grubby American rap-rockers responsible for such eloquent contributions to the pop canon as I Wish I Was Queer, So I Could Get Chicks. By day, however, Perry is something of a budding music industry entrepreneur. The Guardian reports.

He describes his new creation BandApp as, "The mini record deal your band has been waiting for." For a small fee, it works as a record store, marketing department and cameraphone-wielding stalker combined. As Perry puts it, "You can take a picture of the drummer getting out of the shower after the gig, press send, and all of your fans have it on their phones." Equally, rather than trying to sign five bands in the hope of selling a million records each, he can, without risk, "sign" 100,000 bands, even if they're only likely to sell 50 records each.

BandApp has already been acclaimed by the kind of rock groups who might have trouble getting their music into the censorious, naked-drummer's-arse-hating iTunes store. But there are numerous other, wildly different, apps emerging that have also been heralded as "revolutionary" for other reasons.

Read full article.

Ghana pastor's urging a woman to repeat the word 'vagina' has gone viral as a ringtone

This is by far the strangest ringtone-gone-viral story I've heard so far. And from Ghana of all places. [via The Accra Mail]

Kumasi-based Rev. Dr. Ebenezer Opambour Adarkwa Yiadom (Prophet-One), leader of the Ebenezer Miracle Worship Center, who made headlines this summer for having a steamy affair, is in the news again.

An audio recording in which he was heard interviewing a woman on how she received slaps on her vagina anytime she went to bed has become one of the fastest spreading cell phone ringtones in town.

The said interview, recorded in a church auditorium during a church service, captured Rev. Opambour urging the hapless woman to repeat the word 'vagina' several times and he leads her to explain what her problem was.

Read full article.

Searching Google for a link to the controversial ringtone, you will be as dismayed as I to learn that there are other "vagina ringtones". Good grief.

Thumbplay apps rock 500'000 downloads

Who says nobody will consider paying for streaming music? [via TechCrunch]

Thumbplay Music, which offers unlimited music streaming apps for a monthly subscription across iPhone (iTunes link), Android, and Blackberry, reports that its smartphone apps have been downloaded 500,000 times since June.

Thumbplay won’t say how many of those downloads turn into paying customers (you get a free trial before having to start paying $9.99 a month), but even if it’s only 10 percent, that’s $500,000 a month in revenues (although even that may be way too generous).

Read full article.

French subsidy for music download card gets EU nod

France's strategy to combat illegal music downloads by contributing to the amount young people pay for them won European Union approval and praise for promoting cultural diversity. Reuters reports.

Under the scheme, French residents who purchase a card to download music from subscription-based website platforms, will only pay half the cost of a 50-euro credit included in the card, with the French government paying the rest. The scheme, which will benefit 12-to-25-year-olds, is expected to last two years, with consumers limited to one card a year.

It will cost France 25 million euros ($34.65 million) annually based on its sales estimate of a million cards. The card, "carte musique jeune" should launch between October 25 and 31, according to ZDNet France.

Read more.

Music industry dismayed by failure in Irish filesharing case

The process of pursuing and penalising illegal filesharers in Ireland has been thrown into uncertainty after a failed attempt by four of the world's largest record companies to legally enforce the "three strikes" rule. Read full text of the high court judgment.

Influential music industry bodies say the judgment is "a setback for the Irish music business".

[via The Guardian]

mSpot Tops 500K Downloads In Two Months

Mobile entertainment startup mSpot has shared stats with TechCrunch about its free music cloud service that allows you sync your entire music collection across Android phones and PCs/Macs.

Since the service’s public launch in June, mSpot has seen 500,000 downloads of the streaming music app to Android phones.

Read full article.

Spotify crashes into Apple on way to US

As Spotify, a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs, attempts to launch in the U.S., some execs from Apple and the top music labels worry that a free-music offer could eat into download sales.

[via News.com]

MorphWiz Wins ‘Best Music Creation App’ at Billboard’s Music App Summit

MorphWiz was chosen as “Best Music Creation App” in the first-ever Billboard Music App Awards, produced by Billboard Magazine, on October 5, 2010.

MorphWiz is a both an expressive musical instrument and an exciting visual experience. Created by Jordan Rudess and Kevin Chartier, MorphWiz is enjoyable for beginners and seasoned musicians alike.

It contains over 50 presets programmed by the wizard himself, Jordan Rudess, to allow for an instantly musical experience from the moment the application is first opened. For more experienced users, a wide array of synthesis, effects, and visual options allow the instrument to be precisely configured to the user's tastes.

Full press release.

A History of Ringtone Rap One-Hit Wonders

Complex on the rise and fall of the "Ringtone Rap Era".

If you’ve been listening to hip-hop for the past decade, then you’ve lived through one of the genre’s strangest periods: The Ringtone Rap Era. It was a time loosely defined by a series of one-hit wonders, songs that seemingly popped up weekly with excellent beats, catchy hooks…and not much else.

What made ringtones so frustratingly disposable was that they were seemingly created with the sole purpose of capitalizing on the then-emerging popularity of ringtones—it didn’t matter if the songs were good in their entirety, since they only needed to bump for the 10-30 seconds that your phone rang.

Although a number of artists were able to begin real careers as ringtone rappers, the genre was notorious for creating stars who made one Top 40 hit and then faded into oblivion.

Read full article.

100 cell phones play wedding march in wedding proposal

Spotted on Gizmodo, this video of 100 cell phones playing a wedding march as a wedding proposal. Nerdy.