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Short History of Cellphone Ringtones

Posted by Hemos on from the the-joy-of-MIDI dept.

RobotWisdom writes "This week's New Yorker magazine includes an interesting short history of cellphone ringtones, including statistics on their (huge) profitability worldwide. My favorite quote: 'I spent three days of productive work time listening to polyphonic ringtone versions of speed metal, trying to find exactly the ringtone that expressed my personality with enough irony and enough coolness that I could live with it going off ten times a day. In a quiet room, in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off-- what are they going to hear?'"

16 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. A shorter history of ringtones by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    A shorter history of ringtones:

    Kewl

    Neat

    Cute

    Distracting

    Bothersome

    Highly Annoying

    Obnoxious

    Grating

    "Hello, is the proctologist available? I need something removed from somewhere."

    coming soon: ringtones with thx 5.1 surround, so everyone can enjoy your taste in interruption melodies!

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:A shorter history of ringtones by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's when you walk up to the woman and say "Pardon me Miss, but when I was your age we had manners."

      and a few seconds later you say "Pardon me Miss, but when I was your age we didn't slap strange people at cafes."

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
  2. The sound of silence by spywarearcata.com · · Score: 5, Funny

    "In a quiet room, in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off--what are they going to hear?"

    Among polite people, or, failing that, with a mobile phone jammer enabled--nothing.

    1. Re:The sound of silence by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 5, Funny

      At the very most, they might hear my phone's vibration mode.

      In college, we used to make a game of calling people in class to see if they remembered to turn their ringers off. Paul lost pretty much every time, rewarding us with a disruptive version of the Notre Dame fight song.

      In an important meeting, my phone is on silence mode - no ringer at all. If I didn't do that, I'd never get anything done.

    2. Re:The sound of silence by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Funny

      we have one of those here too. we grabbed her cellphone when she was away and uploaded a ringtone for her (I've got copies of ringtone making software) we changed her ringtone to "HEY LOOK! I'M AN ASS WHO LIKES LOUD RINGS!" said loudly by a co-worker.

      after that she stopped leaving her cellphone on her desk.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Meetings... by darkstar949 · · Score: 5, Funny

    They are going to hear that you have too much time on you hands...

  4. Ringtone story by suso · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was with my wife in a pizza place a few years ago and we happened to be talking about baseball (once in about probably 10 times I've talked about it in my life) and right then the girl's cell phone in the booth next to us goes off and plays "Take me out the ballgame". That was a weird coincidence.

    I made my own long and dissonant ringtone for text messages so that it will wake me up at night if a server goes down.

  5. Re:The only ringtone needed EVAR by DrEldarion · · Score: 4, Funny

    Lies! Clearly the only ringtone ever needed is the song from level one of Super Mario 2. I have yet to hear anyone say anything but "That is AWESOME" when they hear it.

  6. No! No more tunes! by rueger · · Score: 3, Funny

    God - the world does not need musical ring tones. Really, we don't. Without doubt they are always irritating and annoying to everyone else.

    Really, just because you think that the Looney Tunes themes is cute doesn't mean that the people around don't view you as an idiot.

    --
    Three Squirrels
  7. I'll take a stab at it by Swamii · · Score: 5, Funny

    I spent three days of productive work time listening to polyphonic ringtones...in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off-- what are they going to hear?

    "You're fired."

    --
    Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
  8. Cell Phone by supe · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't have a cell phone you insensitive clods!

  9. Albatross by linuxwrangler · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sometimes I feel like John Cleese yelling, "It's f***ing seabird f***ing flavored".

    I want my stereo to play music.

    I don't need my phone to play a bad rendition of some tune - I want it to ring.

    I want my beer to taste like, um, beer - not razzberries, lemons, etc.

    Maybe I've become an old coot. But is sure saves me money.

    BTW, I selected the "falling rockets" built in ring on my Nokia. Everyone hates that tone (my wife says, "your phone is crying") so I've never heard that ring on another phone. Perfect - I never have to do the "self-frisk" whenever a phone rings.

    --

    ~~~~~~~
    "You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
  10. Craze explained by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny
    Seriously, I do not understand the level of popularity that ringtones have acheived - especially considering that they cost money!

    So someone can show their individuality (just like everone else.)

    Or (the Reader's Digest version)

    Moo.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  11. Re:What are they going to hear? by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny
    I'd like to meet the idiot who thought playing a sound was a good idea while turning the phone OFF... FLIPPIN' IDIOTS..

    Not a Windows XP user, are you?

    disable,disable,disable,disable,disable,disable,di sable,disable

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  12. Re:What are they going to hear? by DaveAtFraud · · Score: 4, Funny

    We keep a copy of a "Dilbert" cartoon from a while ago (7/4/03). The scenes are:

    1) Alice hearing somebody's cell phone going off on the other side of the cube wall.
    2) Alice glaring at cell phone sitting on work-surface (owner missing).
    3) The owner asking Alice if she has seen his cell phone and her responding "Was it metallic, noisy and flushable?"

    A copy generally finds its way to the people who leave their phone at their desk. Most people get the hint so we haven't flushed one yet.

    --
    They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
    Ben
  13. making ringtones from old PC demos by rsw · · Score: 3, Funny

    A buddy of mine and I decided that the ringtones we really really really wanted were the music from isi and Final isi. This is no mean feat, however: our phones (Sanyo SCP-8100s) only play midi and some crappy .wav format, and the latter is clearly unacceptable (both because it's limited in length to 30 seconds and because... well... it's just not cool enough!).

    So what did we do? Jim modified DOSBOX's OPL3 emulation code to dump out the opcodes being sent to the FM channels and handed over the output to me.

    From there, it was a matter of parsing the various channel setup data into some semblance of notes, deciding which combination of general MIDI patches best emulated the sound of the FM synthesizer given the patchset on my phone, and writing a whole bunch of code.

    In the end, we did it: isi.mid and fisi.mid are the full soundtracks to isi and Final isi, respectively. In addition, I made a couple other versions of the Final isi soundtrack to skip to various parts of it that are more interesting and/or make better ringers than starting at the beginning: fisi2.mid, fisi3.mid.

    These ringers pretty much rule the roost.

    -rsw