What is a ringtone ?
The term ringtone originated from the early telephones and the inner mechanism that consisted of a bell and electromagnetically-driven hammer that would produce a ringing sound as a call was being made. The electric signal would power the electromagnet which would move at a rapid pace releasing the hammer and hitting the bell, creating the sound.
Although the noise was traditionally a ring and is still known as such, modern ringtones are electronically produced with a warbling, chirping or other sound. With contemporary telephones the length and frequency of ringtones can indicate where an incoming call is being made from, for example a shorter interval in a ringtone could signal a call from an 0800 number, etc.
With early research showing people would not pick up the phone until it stopped ringing, breaks were introduced to avoid such a problem, resulting in the common ring-pause-ring cadence pattern that is used today.
In mobile phones, the first commercial phone that offered the used customisable ringtones was the Japanese NTT DoCoMo Digital Mova N103 Hyper by NEC, which was released onto the market in May 1996. This mobile phone offered a few preset songs in the MIDI format, whereas the September 1996 release of the IDO Digital Minimo D319 Denso phone offered the user the chance to create an individual and original melody as a ringtone as opposed to the presets.
This was a huge success in Japan and a book was released in 1998 that provided details on how to customise phones to play snippets of popular songs, a book that went on to sell over 3.5 million copies. The first of the downloadable ringtone services was a Finnish creation seen in the fall of 1998.
The Finnish mobile operator Radiolinja (now known as Elisa) started a service known as Harmonium that contained tools for individuals to create their own monophonic ring tones that could be sent via SMS to a mobile phone. This led the way for a number of companies to offer a similar service, providing ringtones to customers that featured a favourite or popular song via SMS for a minimal fee.
Choosing a Ringtone
Currently, providers offer users the ability to create their own ringtones with a on-phone composer or a sample/loop arranger (i.e. Sony Ericsson MusicDJ). This type of ringtone maker uses encoding formats that are unique to a specific phone model or brand. Other ringtone formats such as MP3 or Midi are also supported by these phones, but need to be downloaded onto the phone before they can be utilised as a ringtone.
2005 saw “SmashTheTones” (now Mobile17) allow users to create a ringtone online without downloadable software or a digital audio editor, and was the first third-party company to offer such a service. Since the creation of the iPhone, Apple have offered users the ability to create a ringtone from a song on the iTunes library, however there are difficulties with this service as there is a 40-second limit as well as the file needing to be in AAC format with the end extension .m4r.
There are four types of ringtone commonly used by mobile phone users. These include:
Monophonic: A ringtone that is a simple series of musical notes that play a single note at a time.
Polyphonic: A ringtone comprising of several notes that can be played at a time. The first of these used sequence recording methods, i.e. MIDI files and they specify the synthetic instrument to be played at a given time.
Truetone: A truetone ringtone is an audio recording such as an AAC or MP3 file that is often an excerpt of a song, which is currently the most popular choice for ringtones.
Singtone: A ringtone created in a karaoke style, which combines a recorded voice with a backing track.
Currently the majority of phones that can be purchased offer a set of ringtones already on the phone, as well as options to customise ringtones or to import MP3 and MIDI files that can also be used. There are a huge number of alternative third-party websites that allow users to make ringtones from digital music or other sound files.
One website known as Audiko, allows users to upload their music onto the website and select the portion of the song they want to use as a ringtone, which can then be converted into the format suitable for their phone choice. There are often no limits on how many songs can be uploaded on these websites and often the website can detect the phone settings that can ensure you have the best file type and format for your phone.
There are a number of companies advertising in magazines, television shows and online that offer users a range of different ringtones and ringtone services. These include realtones, monophonic and polyphonic tones as well as comedy ringtones. As well as this many of these companies also offer users other services than ringtones, such as comedy crank calls, picture, emoticons and many other mobile phone services.
A new trend in ringtones is the use of videotones, where a users can choose to have a video play on an incoming call rather than a simple sound, which is opening the market again and creating huge popularity. Ringtones are now unlimited and any sound can be used as a ringtone on a mobile phone. This is also translating into landline phones, with many customisable options being released on this type of service.