Ringtone Wiz iOS App – Custom Ringtones for Your iPhone

The Ringtone Wiz app lets you create your own custom ringtones and features support for 35 different languages. slapapp reports via Product Review.

This multi-track designer lets you get creative with music, text-to-speech and recorded voice. You can even combine all three to come up with the most original ringtones you can think of.

Ringtone Maker app now available for Blackberry and Android

The Ringtone Maker app originally available for iPhones only, now supports Android and BlackBerry devices.

In their own words: I's the fastest and easiest way to create custom ringtones for your phone anytime you feel like creating one. You can now create unlimited amount of ringtones without ever paying again. It is so fast and easy that by the end of the first day of use don't be surprised if you have created over 20 custom ringtones in mere minutes.

Nazi theme removed from iTunes

Apple removed a notorious anthem of the Nazi Party from the German version of its iTunes online music store on Wednesday, a German spokesman for the US firm told Reuters.

Named after a young party activist killed in 1930, the marching song Horst Wessel Lied, was the unofficial anthem of the Nazis until it was banned in Germany at the end of World War II.

The Apple spokesman said it had been taken off iTunes but did not say if other Nazi-era songs had also been removed.

Read full article.

GeoRing app Turns Your Entire Library Into Ringtones

GeoRing let's you create a ringtone playlist with your favorite songs. The iphone app randomly picks a song from your playlist when your phone rings.

You can also tag your incoming calls with music and location. Play a song from your iTunes library whenever your iPhone rings. Plus, geotag your incoming calls and view them on a map.

[Spotted on Cult of Mac]

Malaysian band plans Maldives début with ringtone releases

Its a music launch with a difference: no pop concert, album promotion or even iTunes premiere – a Malaysian rock band aims to break into the Maldivian music market through cell phone ringtones. Minivan News.

Pop Shuvit, the Kuala Lumpur-based band, has four successful albums to its name. Its adrenalin fuelled live performances have won it fans across Asia and the band is often touted as the continent’s leading hip hop rock outfit.

The band has followed an unusual route to stardom. Their first single ‘Skaters Anthem’ was released exclusively online, where it became an instant hit and lead to the channel ESPN licensing the song for use in their Summer X-games broadcasts.

Pop Shuvit is also making a foray into the Maldivian music scene with the imminent release of their singles as ring tones in Maldives.

Read full article.

Billboard To Start Ranking Breakout Artists

Billboard, the music industry trade magazine and website announced Thursday that it is launching a new chart called "Uncharted."

Rankings will be based on a variety of factors, including YouTube clicks, MySpace Music page views and Twitter traffic. The artists don't have to be unsigned, but they must not have appeared on any of Billboard's other charts.

[via npr]

Headphones That Produce Quiet and Side Effects

According to The New York Times, headphones that use active noise reduction can leave some users feeling queasy.

In most of these models, a small built-in microphone samples the ambient sound. Then the device creates an inverse audio frequency, which is intended to sonically “cancel” out the original noise. The How Stuff Works site has the full technical explanation at bit.ly/p33cf. This system may also produce a slight hissing sound.

All this noise-canceling activity may make some people queasy.

Read full article.

Headphones That Produce Quiet and Side Effects

According to The New York Times, headphones that use active noise reduction can leave some users feeling queasy.

In most of these models, a small built-in microphone samples the ambient sound. Then the device creates an inverse audio frequency, which is intended to sonically “cancel” out the original noise. The How Stuff Works site has the full technical explanation at bit.ly/p33cf. This system may also produce a slight hissing sound.

All this noise-canceling activity may make some people queasy.

Read full article.

The Beatles Have Already Sold More Than 5 Million Songs on iTunes

Two months after making their iTunes debut, more than 5 million tracks and more than 1 million albums by the Beatles have been sold worldwide.

As Entertainment Weekly notes, 2 million of those songs and 450,000 albums sold in the first week alone. The Associated Press reports that the current best-selling Beatles album in the U.S. is Abbey Road, while the top song is "Here Comes the Sun."

[via Mashable]

Universal and Sony Music plan 'instant pop' to beat piracy

Ten years after piracy first began to ravage the music industry, Britain's two biggest record labels, Universal and Sony Music, will finally try to play their part in stopping it, by making new singles available for sale on the day they first hit the airwaves. [via The Guardian]

Songs used to receive up to six weeks radio airplay before they were released for sale – a practice known as "setting up" a record. But the success of selling the winner's single immediately after the X Factor final has made record bosses think again.

Read full article.

King Juan Carlos ringtone? giggling children

King Juan Carlos of Spain has the sound of giggling children set as his ringtone. How do we kow? Because it went off during a meeting with a Honduran ambassador and was of course posted on YouTube.

[El Pais via Gizmodo]

King Juan Carlos made ringtone headlines before, in 2007, after losing his temper at Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, at a summit of Latin American and Iberian leaders in Chile.

“Por qué no te callas!” become a popular ring-tone for mobile phones in Spain as well as a rallying cry for Mr Chávez’s opponents in Venezuela."

10 iPhone apps for music lovers

Everyone knows about Pandora, Last.fm and Spotify, but USA Today has reviewed 10 other apps, which have mostly flown under the radar, that deserve props for making it easier for us to enjoy the music we love.

1. Audiogalaxy Mobile

2. sir Sampleton

3. ooTunes Radio

4. Earworms

5. SoundHound

6. TuneWiki

7. Concert Vault

8. Local Concerts

9. Top 100s by Year

10. Adaptunes

Read USA Today's reviews.

Shazam Gets Spotify for Android and IPhones

Music identification service, Shazam has announced a deal to incorporate the music streaming service, Spotify into its free and premium Apps for iPhone, iPod touch and Android.

As a result, Shazamers will be able to access Spotify directly through a new 'Play in Spotify' feature, which will take them directly to Spotify where they can immediately begin listening to the full track that they either tagged or discovered within Shazam from recommendations or the Shazam charts.

[via Cellular-News]

Nokia Gets Exemption from Paying Music Royalty Levies

Nokia has been exempted from paying copyright feees to the Hungarian music collections society, Artisjus, but only because a court found that that Artisjus' procedures were unfair and unbalanced.

[via Cellular News]

Stopping illegal file sharing a low priority for DOJ?

An interesting read in News.com on the actual efforts of the DOJ in protecting intellectual property rights.

... Media companies say piracy costs the U.S. economy billions and kills jobs, harming actors and musicians as well as caterers and truck drivers. Entertainment companies spend millions on lobbying efforts and all the government can muster is one "significant' digital-media prosecution.

Is the commercial pirating of films and music online harder to prosecute? Are media companies hurt by this as much as they say? (The credibility of the studies that film and music sectors have cited on the impacts of piracy were called into question by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last year.) How much support in Washington do entertainment companies possess?

For all the talk about the political might of big entertainment companies, when it comes to protecting copyright, it appears more and more that they're on their own.

Read full article.

Against Headphones

One in five teenagers in America can’t hear rustles or whispers, according to a study published in August in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), reports The New York Times.

These teenagers exhibit what’s known as slight hearing loss, which means they often can’t make out consonants like T’s or K’s, or the plinking of raindrops. The word “talk” can sound like “aw.” The number of teenagers with hearing loss — from slight to severe — has jumped 33 percent since 1994.

Given the current ubiquity of personal media players — the iPod appeared almost a decade ago — many researchers attribute this widespread hearing loss to exposure to sound played loudly and regularly through headphones.

Read full article. Change in Prevalence of Hearing Loss in US Adolescents (JAMA).

Related articles on teenage hearing loss.

Ugandan President raps for elections on YouTube and in ringtones

The Wall Street Journal on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, up for re-election, gone rapper on YouTube in an attempt to strike a chord with youth.

In a music video that's gone viral, Uganda's hottest new rapper whips up crowds with his chant: "You want another rap?" The crowd responds: "Ye Sebo!" or, Yes, sir!

Dressed in a suit and tie as he delivers his lines from a podium, this video sensation isn't exactly Jay-Z.

Despite his unlikely rapping role, Uganda's president does appear to have a genuine following.

Mr. Museveni's rap plays on radio stations in Uganda, with his video garnering tens of thousands of views on YouTube in a single day. Ugandan telecom companies have made the song into ringtones.

Read full article.

Row Between Cellphone Companies and Music Composers over Revenue Pie

Steady technological advances in India, including increased broadband penetration and rising number of mobile phone subscribers, have been creating newer avenues for non-physical music formats. [Tehelka via Cellular News]

With consumers eager to download the latest numbers like "Sheila ki jawani" on their cellphones, a battle royale appears to be playing out between lyricists and composers and mobile service providers about who gets to retain a larger share of the revenue pie.

... "India has 500 million mobile phone subscribers, as against 16 million Indians who have access to the internet. The music industry is roughly a tenth of the entire movie business. An amazing fact is that the caller tune business has brought in more money than the entire music industry," said Jehil Thakkar, executive director (media and entertainment), KPMG.

Read full article.

Most US Internet users have paid for content

Nearly two-thirds of US Internet users have paid to download or access online content such as music, movies or news articles, a survey showed Thursday.

In the survey:

-- 33 percent of Internet users have paid for digital music online or software

-- 21 percent for apps for cell phones or tablet computers

-- 19 percent for digital games

-- 18 percent for digital newspaper, magazine, or journal articles

-- 16 percent for videos, movies, or TV shows

-- 15 percent for ringtones.

[The AFP]