New Yorker offers up history of ringtones
posted March 1st 2005 2:36AM
Leave it to The New Yorker, home of long, thoughtful essays on everything from the Iraq war to the work of Hayao Miyazaki, to deconstruct that ubiquitous sonic presence in 21st century life, the cellphone ringtone. Not surprisingly, Harmonium, the first program developed to create polyphonic ringtones, was developed by a Finnish programmer. What may be more surprising is the size of the ringtone market: a whopping $4 billion in 2004. In true New Yorker fashion, the article looks at the ringtone business, tone junkies — one guy claims to spend $10 a month on tones, mostly of Led Zep songs — and the evolution of the technology, which is poised to take the wind out of that $4 billion market, since it's getting easier to make your own ringtones. Jimmy Page better grab those royalties while he can.
Even as the tools to create your own ringtones continue to evolve, I suspect the market to purchase them will remain strong.
To draw an analogy, the ubiquity and ease-of-use of Microsoft Word does not make us all published authors. Beyond the tool, there must also be talent. As sophisticated as the make-your-own-ringtone tools become, at some point musical skill will be a pre-requisite.
Carmi
http://writteninc.blogspot.com
With today's modern phones, polyphonic ringtones are becoming a thing of the past. Therefore I disagree with Carmi's post. Nowadays, making a new ringtone is as easy as sampling a section of your favourite MP3.
The Microsoft Word analogy is a little inaccurate, as users are not composing ringtones.
-Ian
I did some research and here is some more info about ringtones: http://www.about-tones.com/blog/item-15.html