![]() Our usage of the telephone – privately, at least – has evolved someone calling you unannounced can be considered rude, and only a select few get a free pass. Maybe it was convenience… or maybe the embarrassment of interrupting a conversation only to answer the phone to your mum grew too much… but somewhere in the midst of all the technological advancements, people slowly started to opt for vibration mode over loud. Like all fads and novelties, the iPhone vs Android ringtone battle soon blew over - and at one point in time, a single phone going off meant that everyone in the room simultaneously checked who was calling them (only to be reminded that they had less friends than they’d at-first thought). ![]() Not only that, but the classic iPhone ringtone became a status symbol in its own right - and people slowly became more inclined to share their allegiance to their preferred brand of phone than their favourite artist. The iPhone, that’s what. By making music on your phone readily available through iTunes, ringtone sales plummeted, and it wasn’t long before big-hitters like Zingy lost momentum and shut their doors for good. ![]() The money was rolling in, and musical history was being written - so what happened? The music industry jumped aboard the bandwagon too, and soared through the rocky years of illegal downloading by selling Truetone ringtones directly to their fans and followers - seeing the likes of 50 Cent, Nelly, Afroman and Rihanna top the Billboard Ringtone Chart List up until around 2010. Classrooms, offices, bus rides and bedrooms were abuzz with a medley of musical tastes and genres, and models like the Sony Walkman W810i set the benchmark for speaker quality.Įveryone had access to a pocket-sized boombox, and with the new-found DJ privileges came with a level of responsibility that not everyone obliged to… a responsibility to not bombard public spaces with tracks like ‘Crazy Frog’ and ‘Funny Baby Chick.’ Shortly after that, the powers-that-be cracked the code to enable phones to play MP3 tracks, and there was no going back. With custom tracks selling for as much as $5-a-piece in the US, the industry grew to an estimated $4 billion by just 2004, with names like Zingy taking the lead at around 2.5 million sales every month. This was a huge step up in comparison to their monophonic predecessor - and marketers worldwide quickly saw that there was money to be made. Hit an off-key, or get the tempo wrong, and you’d look like a real amateur - but done well, and you could let the world know which side of the Oasis/Blur divide you stood on, or that you were more Faithless than Britney Spears.Īnd with it, polyphonic ringtones made their first appearance – with the classic Nokia ringtone getting a polyphonic makeover. There were endless hours of fun to be had with the ringtone composer back then, which coincided nicely with the pre-MySpace era of the internet - meaning that those fortunate enough to have a dial-up connection at home could source and download codes for all their favourite songs. The first mass-market phone to have a ringtone composer built-in was the Nokia 3210 notably, this model did not have a vibrate function at launch. So when did personalised ringtones transition from smash hit to social suicide - and at what point did we all mutually decide to switch to silent?īack when mobiles and cellphones were a new thing, ringtone options were limited to a select number of MIDI tracks, like the typical ‘ring ring’… a few variations of beeps and boops, and the ever-famous Nokia tune (which is so iconic, it has its own Wikipedia page). This was the case up until the late 90s when hits like Auld Lang Syne, Brave Scotland, Charleston and Mexican Hat Dance made their way onto the scene.Ĭhoosing your favourite was as important as choosing what trainers to wear - and the parent/child divide soon became apparent, with ringtones like William Tell becoming synonymous with the classic dad. Those of us who lived through the golden age of mobile technology in the Nineties and Noughties will undoubtedly recognise that fun little sequence as the composition for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on your Nokia’s ringtone composer.Īnd although the thought of having a nursery rhyme blare out from your phone today would make most of us cringe, the novelty had a longer run than you might think.
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