Ringtone Producer

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.