Remember When You Called Someone and Heard a Song? (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Motherboard article: If you were youngish in the early 2000s, you probably remember this phenomenon -- calling a friend's cell phone, and instead of hearing the the standard ring, you heard a pop song. Called ringback tones, this digital music fad allowed cell phone owners to subject callers to their own musical preference. Ringback tones were incredibly trendy in the early and mid-2000's, but have since tapered off nearly to oblivion. Though almost nobody is buying ringbacks anymore, plenty of people still have them from back in the day. [...] In the process of writing this story, I heard from several people that they or someone they knew still had a ringback tone, in large part because they have had it for years, and don't know how to get rid of it.

Comments

Um, no. Actually I don't

[Snotnose]

I turned 42 in y2k. Had I called someone and got this bullshit I've have probably driven to their house and slapped them around asking "WTF asshole?".

Re:2000s? Try 1980s.

[omnichad]

Some of my friends were doing this shit back in the 80s on their answering machines and voicemail cards.

This audio plays before the callee picks up on the remote network (and it's not detected as a pickup by the networks either). Instead of the normal ringing tone you hear when you call someone (440 and 480 Hz together), you hear a recorded song instead.

Some basics

[Balthisar]

First of all, a "ringback tone" isn't what you hear on an answering machine or voicemail; it's what you hear in lieu of the local signal for "the line is ringing." Apparently, according to the F.A., this was "a thing" in the early 2000s.

Next of all, was it really "a thing"? I've been on cellular since 1996, and exclusively since 2002. I'd never heard of this thing until 2011, when I moved to China, where they're (apparently) all the rage. Call a number, and instead "ring, ring, ring", you hear someone's chosen song or other audio. Nifty. Irritating (am I on hold? Is there a switching problem?). Quite popular in China. Non-existent in the USA where Slashdot is based.

In the USA, from 1996 until 2011, and from 2016 until now? I've literally never experienced a ringback tone, unless a thousand people are trolling me with country-representative ringback tones that are identical to the normal switched network.

The F.A. seems to be US-based. WTF are they talking about?

It was a red flag back then

[schleimkeim]

All the people I knew that had a ringback song were assholes or criminals.

Re:Um, no. Actually I don't

[AmiMoJo]

Ye of little imagination. People used to use a "sorry, this number has been disconnected" message, and then tell their friends to just ignore it. Got rid of most phone spam in the days before TrueCaller.