Orba Squara is the Artist behind iPhone Song

In case you wondered who is behind the iPhone song in the commercial, the answer is: An unknown singer named Orba Squara alias Mitch Davis.

At the time when Apple picked the song "Perfect Timing (This Morning)", Orba Squara had no deal with a record label.

Now Universal Music Licensing will publish four songs before the album's October 9th release date. The album is called sunshyness.

... Orba Squara sunshyness is available on iTunes.

[via I4U]

iPhone Ringtone Sheet Music

NYC musician Andy Neesley has written the sheet music of the iPhone ringtone for Gizmodo. How cool is that?

Time may be up for that phoney music

The moment of truth may be looming for the infernal ring tone, reports The Age. A guerilla group calling itself the The Ringtone Society - a project dedicated to free polyphonic ringtones composed by international musicians - is ready to strike.

"With the help of the coming Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Dutch online collective plans to rid the world of uninspiring ringtones.

Comparing itself to tackling the graffiti culture by transforming public spaces and making public transport fun again, its mission statement is to "free the world of digitally dull, aurally repetitive, copy-cat mobile phone ringtones and reclaim the space for innovative global art and sound"

It will launch its attack in October at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and invites festival-goers to attend a series of ringtone concerts.

... The ringtone market is expected to blossom further as consumers download entire songs on their phones through 3G technology, and customised ringback tones enable callers to hear songs instead of conventional network ringing tones. The phenomenon is also opening up new distribution avenues for songwriters.

For this latest initiative, Australian composers and musicians are asked to come up with original ringtones, be it jazz, heavy metal, country or classical, to add to a global online library.

Composers are asked to email ringtones as MP3 (polyphonic) files up to 30 seconds long to Lauren, at the Melbourne International Arts Festival: l.snelling@melbournefestival.com.au by 5pm on Monday September 11.

Compositions must be original and created specifically for the festival.

The compositions will be transformed into ringtones by the Ringtone Society, then made downloadable.

Composers will receive royalties through the Australasian Performing Right Association.

Start Mobile offers original music for mobiles

Start Mobile - well known for it's mobile art gallery featuring thousands of original works from emerging artists from around the world - is now launching music for cell phones with a new offering called M60 - sixty second original songs delivered as true tones directly to consumers' cell phones + mobile devices.

START MOBILE invited independent musicians, bands, producers, and DJs from around the world to create new music for the mobile medium - the only stipulation being that their complete songs had to clock in at sixty seconds. [via Josh Spear]

Previous posts related to Start Mobile Art on mobile phones:

-- Start Mobile launched Patrick Nagel Mobile Art Gallery

-- Pop surrealist and underground art for mobile devices

-- New Art for cell phones

Cingular, MySpace, InfoSpace join as ringtone providers

Cingular Wireless, InfoSpace and MySpace.com have teamed up to allow undiscovered talents to create and sell their own ringtones, writes The Seattle Times.

The service, called Cingular Mobile Music Studio, allows bands with MySpace profiles to turn their music into a ringtone, even if they don't have a record contract. The ringtone is then sold on the band's profile page to help promote its music and to make money.

The MySpace service will work a bit like "American Idol." The artists will submit their songs; a panel of judges will determine whether the content is original, and then turn it into a ringtone. Artists will then be able to link to the ringtone from their MySpace profile. The ringtone will cost the standard $2.50, with 25 percent of the proceeds going to the artist. InfoSpace will also get a share; MySpace will not.

Artists will receive checks quarterly as long as the money exceeds $100. If the minimum is not reached, the money will roll over to the next period. The studio service is considered a beta launch, while all the parties involved begin to understand how it may catch on.

BERLINCALLIN'

BERLINCALLIN' is calling all artists and creative people to submit videoringtones and video clips.

BERLINCALLIN connects visual artists with the industry. They are building a databse to pitch artists work to the industry and the industry's needs to the artists. They are looking for quality video clips (3D, Flash, animation and film) for videoringtones and mobile clips.

The artist gets a 50% revenue share if his/her work is published.

[Press Release]

Musicians compose original works for cellphones

A new generation of songwriters sees the mobile phone as an emerging medium for artistic expression, and they are composing original material exclusively for cellphones: the ringtone for ringtone's sake. Fortune reports via Moco News.

"When you're writing a ringtone, you have about 20 seconds to convey a message of love, heartbreak, or hope—or at least come up with an infectious hook. "With ringtones, it has to be memorable," composer Disco D, O'Loughlin says. "And it's got to have a little bite to it."

Ringtones are a shockingly lucrative business, generating more than $2 billion in annual worldwide revenues for the record labels that license their tunes and the retailers and phone companies that sell the tones for about $2 a pop. Everywhere you look, non-musicians are trying to cash in on the craze.

Movie studios want to make bits of film dialogue available—instead of your phone trilling, perhaps you'd like it to have Jack Nicholson say, "Here's Johnny!" And sports figures are recording shout-outs that fans can buy in lieu of regular rings.

... It is one thing to write a killer ringtone, but then it needs to get airplay, or phone play. That's where companies like Jamster come in. Jamster, a unit of Internet services company VeriSign, formats music for distribution on mobile devices and markets the ringtones on its website and through TV ads on MTV, BET, and other music-oriented networks.

O'Loughlin, who owns a production company called Next Plateau Entertainment, has compiled about 20 original ringtones from various artists, which he's pitched to Jamster executives, who will decide which ones to license and market—and perhaps turn into hits."

Scott Storch Gets Into Ringtones

He's written huge singles for the likes of Lil Kim, Beyonce, 50 Cent, Dr.Dre, Lil' John and Xzibit and worked with Mariah Carey, The Roots and Toni Braxton.

Now hip-hop's most prolific songwriter/producer/musician Scott Storch is devoting his time to more…worthwhile ventures. Believe it or not, the guy is now writing ringtones.

Teaming up with America's leading provider of real music ringtones, 9 Squared Inc. and entertainment management firm IIAMG, Scorch will be providing original ringtones that will be distributed through all the major brands.

[via Undercover]

Anyone looking for a talented Ringtone Composer?

Christopher E. Stanley sent me his resumé, he's a talented Ringtone Composer looking for work. He lives in California and if you're interested send him a mail! winntermute@sbcglobal.net.

Experience

Solo Artist In Electronic Music. "ECHO" 1995-present

Have released over 40 singles as well as most recently completed a full length album release with label mates (san francisco based Violence Recordings. Violence Recordingshas bio+music)

Have been making electronic and rock music for over 15 years and have extensive knowledge in synthesis, sound design, composition and overall sound engineering.

I have a complete home studio complete with Mac g5 running Logic 7 pro, peak, waves diamond, endless other soundshaping tools. Also have familiarity with Pro Tools. Wide ranging vintage synth collection,

Soundcraft Ghost 32/8 mixing console. Various outboard such as: Avalon, drawmer and focusrite eqs and compression that I use to make sure all of my productions have a professional sheen.

I have worked in the commercial end of sound, as well creating music for Levis, Gatorade, and Egreetings: http://www.playgroundgroup.com/samples/flash/levis/pg_levis.html , this is a link to the levis project.

I am used to working with deadlines and they are something I am comfortable with and work well with.

1992-95 worked as second engineer at acme studios in Chicago,IL

I also play multiple live instruments which i frequently incorporate into my compositions.

In search of ring tone artists

Looking for artists, or suggestions for artists working with ring tones for an upcoming show at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California.

The 2 programs will explore different ways the phone has been used in cultural and creative contexts through film, video and new media works.

Send suggestions/responses to Laura Deutch at ldeutch@berkeley.edu.

[via Rhizome.org]

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.