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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.
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?".
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.
Not the salesman kind of call center, a disaster recovery kind of place. Had to call a lot of people back. Ringbacks were the bane of my existence. Right up there with the answering machine / voicemail sermons. People would go into an entire Bible study before the beep to let you record a message. Forced by my job to listen through it so I could leave a message. Arrrrrg.
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?
--Jim (me)
This started as a "Thing(TM)" in Japan and South Korea in the late 90s and early 2000's. Technically, it's called "color ringback" and - as opposed to custom answering machine setups, etc. - is implemented at the carrier level. As an earlier poster described, this is the sound that you would hear rather than the standard (in the US) 4/2 second ringtone you hear when you dial a number waiting for someone to answer. Working in the industry at the time, we started getting requests for it, so implemented it, but it never took off here in the US, so it dropped off in use to pretty much zero.
Except that this is about ringbacks , not ringtones.
Before Google bought it and began it's slow decline as a useful service, Grand Central offered this. I'm not sure it allowed a custom music file, but you could choose from a bunch of different ringing types including British, European, and Russian tones. Just for kicks I set mine to Russian.
I think if they allowed this feature and custom wav files now I'd be tempted to make my ringing tone start with the SIT tone to through off the telemarketers (though does that trick actually work anymore?) and spam callers.
It was really annoying, especially if you were on a per-minute-charge cell plan and used the old three-ring call as a calling card so you didn't have to pay for a phone call if they weren't there - it would still be on their caller ID so they would know you had called, just no message. Harder to judge timing.
I had my phone stolen once (well ok, it probably fell out of my pocket). I called it repeatedly hoping that whoever answered would return it. Each time I called, I heard a different ringback tone.
By the time I called Verizon to report it stolen, they had racked up over $500 in ringback tones. It was less than 8 hours from the time I lost it until I reported it stolen, I have no idea how they ordered over 100 ringback tones in that short period, especially since it was an old-school flip phone, so they ordered them all through the tiny 4 line browser screen on the phone.
Fortunately, Verizon refunded all of the purchases, and I had them lock out the account to prevent any future online purchases.
dude ringtones were popular from around 97 or whatever the year nokia introduced the sms deliverable beep tones was to.. well, up to phones having mp3 and a little while beyond. itunes probably has still some ringtones.. but.
RINGBACK tones are an OPERATOR SERVICE where instead of the beep pause beep tones you can force people calling you to listen a very shitty quality song - and typically, afaik, you only get to select from a list from the operator. and since it is a business where they can then bill you monthly for it or whatever..
it's still somewhat popular in asia. they think novelty like that is cool.
and because it's an operator service it can be tricky to turn off if you're too stupid to browse the sms codes for your operator.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Verizon, ATT, Sprint and T-Mobile still offer them. Typical cost is $0.99 per month for the service plus $1.99 per year for each ringback tone.
They are/were most certainly a real thing. I helped implement them back in the day when I worked for a large telecom. We were throwing tons of ideas out to try and keep the money flowing in after the telecom bubble popped in the early 2000's. At my old company we had dozens of people working on ringback tones as well as other more crazy ideas.
Luckily one that I pitched at the time never got traction. I proposed instead of playing music as a ringback tone to play advertisements to whoever called you in order to get a better rate plan. (This predated many of the unlimited whatever plans, back when text messages cost $0.10/message send OR receive). I felt dirty at the time, but luckily my idea was ignored. I would hate to have been remembered as the guy who made it where everyone had to listen to ads whenever they placed a call to some cheap bastard looking to score a less expensive rate plan.
Though now I'm wondering how you get this, because if I set up a ringback tone that sounded like a fax machine it'd probably finally put an end to the calls from that bitch susan from member services.
Financial reasons for ringback tones disappeared; that's why this thing has disappeared from our lives.
The financial incentive was that the carrier was allowed to have it counted as a "call completion" at the start of the call, rather than at the time the call was actually picked up. Ot
Now that we have "unlimited minutes", this no longer has financial value to the carriers; now it's actually a cost center.
So carriers have quietly swept it under the rug of history; the equipment to do it is still there, and the music licenses still in place, but it actually costs them for you to use it, instead of paying off as $0.06-$0.12, which is about the amount of time an average person will let a phone ring before hanging up.
By putting a song there, the idea was you would let it ring longer, in order to not hang up on the song, given that there was still the possibility of the person you were calling answering the phone.
All the people I knew that had a ringback song were assholes or criminals.
I worked at Alltel in the IT department when this was originally released. I hated the concept, but abhorred being forced to listen to them. Because it was (a) usually an annoying song NOT of my choosing and (b) in the phone earpiece it usually sounded just horrible.
After a few days I informed my manager of a perfect lost sales opportunity: People actually pay us to play "their song" as a ringtone for everyone, right? I'll pay us even MORE to not EVER play them to me. She laughed and ignored me.
I shouldda run it straight up to the CEO back then -- I coulda' been a contender! I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Let's be honest here, people: What is that story doing here? This isn't even a story. This is something you'd probably get asked by a buddy when you're sitting there on his porch, beer in the hand, it's too hot to think of a relevant subject and he's bothered by the awkward silence and the buzzing of flies around you that he tries to stir up some kind of conversation, hell, ANY topic will do, as long as you can at least talk about something.
This is usually when you'd grunt something agreeing, take another sip from your beer and say something non-committing like "Yeah. Kinda remember. Sucked." or something like this, before the two of you return to quietly sipping your beer and one of you saying "Hell, let's go inside where the AC is, the heat's killing me".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Me neither. The Register says: Custom RBTs never really took off in the UK. Only T-Mobile gave them any credence but never bothered to promote them much. They aren't kidding, I have never heard one or even heard of them.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Same exact thing plus the user being billed for long distance while your phone is ringing... Ringbacks are the ring, they don't count against usage, as the line hasn't been answered while you're listening to them.
So no... not even close to the same thing.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.