Ringtone Producer

Most people despise television ads so much that they PVR/DVR/TiVO most programmes so that they can forward through it. Poor, ignored advertisers. Maybe they should take a page from Vodafone’s book and allow their next jingle to be played by cellular ringtones.

The New Zealand division of international cell phone giant Vodafone has been scoring hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3nSoEhY8SM) with its innovative new television advert involving a symphony created with 53 distinct ringtones.

The Vodafone Symphonia, a remarkable cellular version of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, was created using a thousand mobile phones and two thousand text messages. Now THAT is an impressive jingle.

We wonder if it will be turned into a ringtone?

If so, and your phone chimes it out in a public space, your network carrier won’t have to pay royalties. Well, at least, not if you’re in the U.S. and your carrier is Verizon Wireless.

In mid-October, a U.S. federal judge ruled that Verizon Wireless won’t be liable to pay public performance royalties when a ringtone is played in public.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) had taken that carrier, as well as AT&T, to court to get the operators to pay royalties every time users’ cellphones chimed out the latest Beyoncé, Kanye – or whichever artist’s music is available in ringtone – in a public place.

However, Judge Denise Cote ruled that the ring itself does not qualify as a public performance under the Copyright Act. She also stated that the operators already pay a mechanical fee and that they make money from selling the ringtone, not from having it played. She also said that consumers do not intend to make a profit from their ringtones.

Well, not to be argumentative, but our guess is that some people would actually pay some cellphone users to just please make their choice of loud ringtones stop in public. Because as we all know, your favourite hit of the moment could be someone else’s biggest irritation.

In Egypt, they are taking the annoyance factor of ringtones and general cellphone usage very seriously. The North African country’s official telecommunications regulatory body has launched a formal Code of Ethics for mobile phones. The 16-point guide, compiled by the Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority and the Consumer Rights Protection Committee warns against annoying others with ringtones, loud conversations and advises about when to switch off cellphones.

The Egyptian Ethics Code guide has the following to say about particularly ringtones: “Choose a non-annoying ringtone. Ringtones aim mainly to make the mobile user know that he has got a call.” What, do they consider Beyoncé loudly calling “all the single ladies” to be a bit much to notify you that you have a phone call then? Our guess would be yes.

The guide goes on to say that mobile phones should never be used to violate others’ privacy or to “annoy or tease” other people.

So remember, if you and your cellphone travel to Egypt, you may have to Walk (AND Talk!) Like An Egyptian! (Yes, we totally couldn’t resist.)

Be warned: ringtones can apparently threaten one’s career – especially if you star in said ringtone yourself!

A group of New Zealand actors who are starring in a wildly popular TV drama – ironically titled Outrageous Fortune – now run the risk of losing their jobs and having the show cancelled after apparently making outrageous demands to enhance their own fortunes.

A report in a local Sunday newspaper states that the dispute between the chief executive of the company that produces the show and the actors’ union was sparked by a spat over the use of the actors’ voices for mobile phone ringtones, then escalated into a failed effort by the cast to negotiate a groundbreaking contract they had hoped would enshrine the rights of actors in all New Zealand productions.

Now the production company is threatening to cancel the planned sixth series.

So the moral of this story? Well, for one, don’t start making demands just because your voice is someone’s ringtone. For all you know, your boss has always found your voice annoying!

For those who would like to have less annoying – or even extremely pleasant voices – as their ringtones, here is some good news.

Mobile music and entertainment company mSpot has just introduced mSpot.com, the mobile music site that lets users personalise their phones by turning up to 30 seconds of any part of their favourite song into a ringtone.

It works as follows: users pick a song from mSpot’s hefty catalogue (of over 400 000 titles), and use the site’s simple editing tool to drag the start and end points to capture up to 30 seconds of their favourite part of a song, even adding an optional fade-in and fade-out feature at each end if they like. Once the highlighted piece is finalised and previewed, users save and download the cut as a ringtone for $2.99 (yes, sadly, only available to US customers). The entire process, from start to finish, takes about a minute, and users don’t need to download software or subscribe to a service.

But before you rush off and start downloading the chorus of Katy Perry’s I kissed a girl, think carefully.

According to Agnieszka Zyluk of ringtone provider Jamba in Berlin, a person’s musical taste, as revealed in a ringtone, can say a lot about him/her, which is why Jamba has gone to great lengths to research its customers.

“We don’t easily get the opportunity to thumb through a person’s record collection. A ringtone says as much about a person and it’s easier to get it across,” says Zyluk.

New social rules are developing around ringtones. Which is why etiquette expert Salka Schwarz of Berlin advises people not to load random ringtones on to their cellphones.

“People tend to sort each other into categories, and the question is in which one do we land,” Schwarz says.

People have some influence in their own categorisation – positive or negative – through the ringtones they select. For example, someone with a soft pop melody as their ringtone might be construed as romantic. But other people might find them overtly sappy.

Strict rules apply to ringtones at the office or in any other professional situation. For example, bank employees would be better off selecting something that is not obtrusive or insistent, because in their job a serious attitude is imperative and their ringtones should reflect that.

So no matter how you’re hilarious you think it would be to have The Apprentice theme song For the Love of Money by The O’Jays as your ringtone when you’re working at the bank, the customers and your boss might not get or appreciate the joke.

After cleverly (and successfully) employing technology during his US Presidential election campaign, it is probably rather apt that President Barack Obama ended up becoming part of it.

The new President had scarcely been sworn in before a Boston company began selling highlights from his inaugural address… as ringtones and multimedia greeting cards.

Skycore LLC, in conjunction with Ringmyname.com, have decided to cash in on the feverish Obamania sweeping the United States. So they created a website called ObamaRingers.com, where fans and supporters of the new Commander-in-Chief can pay $1.99 to have their phones chime such nuggets as “The time has come”, “Challenges we face” or “Pick ourselves up”.

We wonder if the President himself will purchase one for his BlackBerry? After all, the fight he had to conduct to keep that smart phone with him during his presidency was, since it posed such a security nightmare, almost more difficult to win than the election itself! But he succeeded, and BlackBerry One, as it has since been dubbed by the media, can continue to occupy the White House with him.

It is actually not so far-fetched to wonder if President Obama would purchase a ringtone for the ‘first phone’. According to a 2008 study conducted by Ipsos MediaCT, a marketing research company, approximately one-third of all mobile phone users download ringtones, and about 40% of users frequently change their ringtones.

The company’s research shows that ringtones are the most common type of mobile music content downloaded by users.

But, as a CNN report recently pointed out, customising a phone with multiple ringtones can be expensive. Depending on the cellular network or service plans, ringtones can cost anywhere from US $0.99 to $2.99. But apparently this technicality isn’t deterring cellphone users. Analysts at Screen Digest, a UK-based firm covering global media markets, predict that mobile music sales will double from $1.6 billion in 2008 to $3.2 billion in 2012.

However, for folks who find themselves to be a bit more cash-strapped than usual during this current global recession, there are plenty of free ways to get ringtones. One includes the ringtone creator application on Facebook (which is merely one of many ringtone applications on the social networking website). That particular application is a fun way for people to select snippets of audio and edit it to their liking.

Whether other people will like it when it ends up as a ringtone on the creator’s cellphone – well, that remains to be seen or heard, doesn’t it?

You don’t have to be a US citizen to participate in the upcoming American election. All you need is a mobile phone. (And it doesn’t even have to be an iPhone!) Thanks to www.voeveo.com, an online marketplace for mobile content ‘where independent creators of ringtones, wallpaper, music, games and videos sell directly to buyers’, and the launch of their VOTE 08 campaign, cellphone users can now make their allegiance to either candidate heard.

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The promise of spring is at last in the air in the Southern Hemisphere, and with it, our thoughts inevitably turn to love.

It turns out our new, annual bout of spring fever is contagious, because many ringtone producers around the world are also pondering matters of love and sex.

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Sunshine. Leisurely strolls through the park. Birdsong.

These are just some of the loveliness we all associate with summer.

However, residents of the Northern Hemisphere, who are enjoying summer right now, might find something disturbingly unnatural about the birdsong these days.

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American cellular service provider AT&T is coughing up money to some of their subscribers as part of a recent class action lawsuit settlement.

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The United States, like the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, is gripped by spring fever right now. And even though the American Presidential election won’t take place until late autumn, the political campaigns have already reached fever pitch.

In this digital era, voters have more options than merely slapping a bumper sticker with their favourite candidate’s name on it on their cars. These days, they can quite literally make their allegiance heard on their cellphones.

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One person’s favourite cellular ringtone is another person’s major annoyance. Yes, in very much the same way a writer stating the obvious during an opening sentence is many a reader’s major annoyance. Tell you something you do NOT know, right?

In 2006, a newspaper survey conducted in the United States found that cellular ringtones were the main pet peeves for office workers, which is what led many American companies to institute cell phone bans at the office during working hours.

If those office workers were annoyed by their colleagues’ ideas of cool ringtones, then this will drive them over the edge: On April 10, Arphiola, a leading B2B (Business to Business) Mobile Content Provider, announced the official launch of their ‘Out-Of-Tune’ ringtones. And yes, ‘Out-Of-Tune’ means exactly that: these ringtones are “ugly and annoying re-productions of popular songs and TV and movie themes” (Arphiola’s own words).

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This brand new year is already well under way with January almost drawing to a close, and whatever ringtone you and your phone rang in the New Year with, we wish all of you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008!

So, what is the buzz on ringtones and ringtone trends this year? (Brace yourself for some statistics.)

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