I rock the ringtone from the Dude's briefcase phone. Ride of the Valkyries is also a fan favorite. A colleague had the Star Wars Imperial March — but only for calls from his wife.
The true way to impose your will on others is to set music ringbacks (the sound the caller hears while they wait for you to pick up). Still popular in India and China, I hear.
I knew the ringtone was officially dead when I watched an Apple-produced show on AppleTV+ and they used a vibration noise as a sound effect for a phone ringing.
I've noticed in a lot of newer movies, people's phones only vibrate and they always notice it and grab it (unless the script says they miss the call/text for plot reasons). Of course, the scene is always quiet at that moment, so you can hear the vibration effect and believe that the character does too. In real life, it doesn't often work that way.
The article doesn't mention the elephant in the room - iPhone. The fall of ringtones and the rise of iPhone isn't a mere coincidence. The feature phones had too little features, everything on them was controlled by the provider, and thus ringtones were something noticeable, one of the few available ways for customization, a way for that brick to do something else. With introduction of iPhone the ring customization - just use any sound file, etc, no payment - became just a very small insignificant feature drowned by a lot of other functionality like full featured web browsing, etc. and thus it lost user's attention. I don't remember anybody doing ring customization on iPhone or any other smartphone besides picking from the preloaded list of rings.
It's been a while since I've done it, but I think it's still possible, though a pain in the ass, to put custom ringtones on an iPhone. It involved renaming a .m4a audio file with to have a .m4r extension and then somehow getting it on the phone. Worth it to have the opening to "Eye of the Tiger" as a ringtone.
"You can create custom ringtones on your iPhone using GarageBand by importing audio, trimming it, and exporting it as a ringtone. First, you'll need the GarageBand app and optionally, an audio file or a song from your Apple Music library. Then, you can import the audio, trim it to under 30 seconds, and export it as a ringtone within GarageBand. Finally, you can set the ringtone in your iPhone's settings under "Sounds & Haptics".
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
1. Get GarageBand and your audio:
Download GarageBand from the App Store if you don't already have it.
If you're using a song from Apple Music, make sure it's downloaded to your iPhone.
You can also import audio files from your Files app or record audio directly in GarageBand.
2. Create a new project in GarageBand:
Open GarageBand and create a new audio recording.
Select the track type (e.g., Files, Music) and import your chosen audio.
If using a song from your library, it must be downloaded to your iPhone.
If the file is dimmed, it is either protected or not downloaded.
3. Edit the audio:
Adjust the start and end points of the audio using the handles to create a 30-second or shorter ringtone.
You can also use the precision editor for more fine-grained adjustments.
If the ringtone is longer than 30 seconds, GarageBand will automatically shorten it when exporting.
4. Export as a ringtone:
Tap the navigation button and then "My Songs".
Select your project, tap the share button, and choose "Ringtone".
Name your ringtone and tap "Export".
5. Set the ringtone:
If the ringtone is less than 30 seconds, you can choose to use it as a standard ringtone, text tone, or assign it to a contact.
To set it as your general ringtone, go to iPhone settings > Sounds & Haptics > Ringtone.
You can also assign the ringtone to a specific contact. "
As someone who unfortunately worked for a ringtone vendor for a shot period, the main thrust of the "industry" was mis-selling a hidden/deceptive "subscription" service to children, which was billed through automatic premium rate mobile phone charges. It was a con-job where phone companies and shady ringtone companies conspired tp rip off children who were too embarrassed to tell their parents they screwed up by unknowingly entering into the subscription (by texting something to some number), and couldn't work out how to cancel the subscription (because this was made insanely hard). And then the next month they would get charged again.
These people were scum.
Something missing from this analysis (though probably not critical to it at all) is the rise of people leaving their phones on Do Not Disturb, especially in the US where spam calls are rampant. I have notifications turned on for maybe 1-2 days out of each month, which means I rarely hear my ringtone. It typically just vibrates.
Wow, they completely missed the two elephants in the room:
1. Downloading MP3s stopped being something easy and free around this time.
2. While the popularity of iPhone was exploding, Apple didn't allow you use any MP3s as ringtones, even if you went through all the steps to get your MP3 files into your iPhone. The Apple walled garden said no, you're holding MP3s wrong, and that was the end of it.
I haven't set up a custom ringtone in years since I don't receive that many calls nowadays, but I having been setting up the "Hey!" notification sound from the Google Nexus phone on all my newer, non-Google phones that followed it.
> In 2006, annual U.S. ringtone sales increased by nearly $400 million, then rose another $400 million the following year, eventually peaking in 2007. This period saw industry pundits forecasting a $10 billion ringtone market that would single-handedly save the music industry.
And disappointed to see an article spend so much time talking about Crazy Frog with zero mention of Crazy Frog's penis lol https://annoyingthing.net/wiki/Censorship
Around 2007 I was talking to music labels about customized ringtones, working with people that could modify vocals in songs to change names and such. The idea being songs could be personalized with people's names and business names, and coming from the labels that own the songs, everyone would be happy and making revenue. I spoke with pretty much all the business development people at the major recording labels, even had a champion biz dev guy from Warner Records promoting the idea, but the larger recording industry socially hated the people in the ringtone industry. They loved the revenues, but the people they disliked and were quietly working to end ringtones simply because they hated rubbing elbows with them, they'd get in physical altercations with the ringtone people. I remember hearing "the crazies of hip hop are nothing compared to the insane ringtone crews."
As feature phones with mp3 support and especially smart phones became more popular, people were able to make their own music ringtones with music they downloaded from wherever. It's been an option in every phone I've used since like 2007.
The decline in sales seems to match up with the rise in popularity of smart phones.
Sometimes I feel the curse of technology is how fast it moves. As soon as you start to enjoy something, it’s gone and yes I can go back to using a flip phone but then you’re not really “competitive” or “compatible” with the modern world.
I guess this will only become
More true with “AI” maybe humans won’t be able to keep up at all ?
I have a much better hypothesis, and I will not support it with an errorprone statistical analysis. Custom ringtones are less popular because phone UI developers made it harder to customize ringtones.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 41.6 ms ] thread[1]https://youtube.com/watch?v=nRpSRP0l4bo
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA-PXhRHPnE&t=388s
1. Downloading MP3s stopped being something easy and free around this time.
2. While the popularity of iPhone was exploding, Apple didn't allow you use any MP3s as ringtones, even if you went through all the steps to get your MP3 files into your iPhone. The Apple walled garden said no, you're holding MP3s wrong, and that was the end of it.
Also 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMupng6KQeE “'Cause over there there's broken bones / There's only music so that there's new ringtones”
And disappointed to see an article spend so much time talking about Crazy Frog with zero mention of Crazy Frog's penis lol https://annoyingthing.net/wiki/Censorship
A sample of bad ringtone (auto-tuned baby crying) which was trending back then (2007-2008) was [1]. Thankfully I never used it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVvFRzMWdL8
The decline in sales seems to match up with the rise in popularity of smart phones.
I guess this will only become More true with “AI” maybe humans won’t be able to keep up at all ?
Kids, we used to type notes in T9 keyboards for these tunes.