SMS is a protocol that was initially created in the late 1980s by GSM (originally Groupe Spécial Mobile, now Global System for Mobile telecommunications), the main mobile system protocol that accounts for about 80 percent of new wireless use worldwide. See “GSM captures 80% of digital mobile market,” Scoop (27 January 2004), viewed online at on 1 September 2004. Also see John Scourias, “A Brief Overview of GSM,” viewed online at -berlin.de/jutta/gsm/js-intro.html on 15 June 2004.5. Vivienne Chow, “Tone of the Future,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 27 September 2001, Feature, p. 2.6. See “An Interview with James Winsoar,” viewed online at _with_james_winsoar.htm on 6 May 2004.7. See “Ringing the Changes,” Economist, 17 April 2004, p. 62: “The dubious firms that currently dominate the ringtone business (many of which began life as providers of porn phone lines) may be squeezed out.”8. Hayden Porter notes that there are two main text formats for monophonic tones, Ring Tone Text Transfer Language (RTTTL) which was developed and used by Nokia, and iMelody, developed by the Infrared Data Association (iRDA) and adopted by Ericsson, Motorola, and Siemens. See Porter, “Phone It In!,” Electronic Musician (February 2004), p. 77.9. MIDI was developed in the early 1980s by synthesizer manufacturers (especially Japanese companies like Yamaha and Roland) in order to coordinate many different synthesizers in rock concerts. Despite its numerous limitations, MIDI become the standard protocol for the transfer of digital instructions to electronic musical instruments.10. See Joseph Palenchar, “NPD Tracks Rising Adoption Rate of Highly Featured Cellphones,” TWICE: This Week in Consumer Electronics (9 February 2004), p. 36. The NPD Group is a consumer tracking company based in Port Washington, N.Y. that has tabulated consumer information for business use since 1967 (see www.npd.com).11. Steve McClure, “‘Ring Tunes’ Ready to Roar for Japanese,” Billboard (13 March 2004). Estimates for the global ringtone market in 2004 are around US$4 billion, as described in Scott Banerjee, “Who’ll Drive the U.S. Ringtones Market?,” Billboard (18 September 2004).12. According to the Yankee Group, based in Boston, the global ringtone market in 2003 amounted to US$2.5 billion; the London–based ARC Group estimates that market at US$3.5 billion. See Laurie Flynn, “The Cellphone’s Next Makeover: Affordable Jukebox on the Move,” New York Times (2 August 2004); and Scott Banerjee, “WMG Inks Mobileway Deal,” Billboard (24 July 2004).13. Scott Banerjee, “Ringtone Rumble Brewing,” Billboard (22 May 2004).14. The two major forms of music publishing royalties are mechanical and performance royalties. The former governs the mechanical reproduction of a particular musical composition (in the form of sheet music or recording), whereas the latter covers performances of such music (either scores or recordings) in public spaces.15. “Ringing the Changes,” p. 62.16. For example, in the small but growing U.S. market, the dominant companies currently are Zingy, Moviso, and Modtones (see “Ringtone Rumble Brewing”).17. Jason Ankeny notes that “While the top–selling single in the U.S. during the last week of September, rapper Lil’ Kim’s ‘Magic Stick’ moved 7,000 retail units, Moviso sold 17,000 ‘Magic Stick’ ringtones over the same period.” In Jason Ankeny, “The New Sounds of Music: Ringtones, the Celestial Jukebox and the Mobilization of Media,” Wireless Review (November 2003), pp. 30–31.18. A succinct discussion of this phenomenon can be found in Dave Laing’s “World Record Sales 1992–2002,” as part of “The Music Industry, Technology and Utopia — An Exchange between Marcus Breen and Eamonn Forde,” Popular Music, volume 23, number 1 (January 2004), pp. 88–89. Laing’s short piece includes a telling chart noting global record sales over a ten–year period: after peaking in 1996 at US$39.8 billion, sales have been on a steady decline, reaching US$31.0 billion in 2002.19. Scott Banerjee, “Getting Their Cut,” Billboard (22 May 2004).20. Paul Sexton, “New Chart Calls Up U.K. Ringtone Sales,” Billboard (5 June 2004), p. 44. Sexton notes that the “[f]inancial and professional services firm KPMG will compile [the chart],” “London–based Official U.K. Charts Co. will market” it, and “David Simmons, CEO of music rights and publishing company Songseekers, conceived the chart last year. Simmons is also head of the MEF Ringtones Initiative. He says he has heard ‘good noises of support’ from Vodafone and other major network operators.” Far from being unprecedented, however, this new chart merely codifies the informal “top ten” charts on many ringtone Web sites.21. “Billboard Bows Ringtones Chart,” Billboard (6 November 2004). Thanks to Hazel Carby for pointing out this recent development to me.22. Uimonen, “‘Sorry, Can’t Hear You!’” Uimonen’s main argument concerns the idea that ringtones are actually music instead of noise, but the author also argues for a more nuanced version of the personalization thesis: “[r]inging tones offer alternative means to personalize one’s phone. Personal and/or collective music tastes define the melodies that are selected“ (p. 61).23. “The New Sounds of Music.”Teens between the ages of 13 and 17 have decreased spending on clothing by 10 percent in order to pay for electronics goods.24. A survey by Yankee Group revealed that 18 percent of mobile phone users are interested in ringtones. The greatest interest in ringtones is found in young adult (18–24) and teen (11–17) age groups, with 41 percent of the former and 22 percent of the latter downloading at least one ringtone per month. The NPD Group has claimed that teens between the ages of 13 and 17 have decreased spending on clothing by 10 percent in order to pay for electronics goods. See Sue Marek, “Raising the Bar on Ringtones,” Wireless Week (15 May 2004), p. 25; and, Yuki Noguchi, “Teens Ring Up Market Share,” Washington Post (25 April 2004).25. Oliver Burkeman, “Fellowship of the Rings,” The Guardian (13 August 2003).26. See Juliana Korantang, “Gold Rush is on in Mobile–Music Sector,” Billboard (26 June 2004).27. Ibid.28. Strategy Analytics, a research firm in Boston, estimates U.S. ringtone sales in 2003 at US$128.6 million. See Michel Marriott, “They Ring, Sing and Make Phone Companies a Bundle,” New York Times (4 May 2004).29. The growing Chinese consumer goods market is another potential site for ringtone sales, the significance of which I discuss below.30. The oft–cited figures of US$3.5 billion global ringtone sales in 2003 and US$32.2 billion in music industry sales in the same year are mentioned in “Tingalingalingaling!” New York Times (18 January 2004).31. Phil Hardy, “Music Executives are Guardedly Optimistic Despite the 7.6% Fall in Global Recorded Music Sales in 2003,” Music & Copyright (28 April 2004).32. Korantang, “Gold Rush.”33. “Technology Briefing Telecommunications: Stooge Sounds Invade Ring Tones,” New York Times (11 August 2004).34. “Ringtone Music Piracy Flourishes in Asia,” Sify News (27 August 2003), viewed online at =13234789, on 18 August 2004.35. Jason Ankeny presents the typical viewpoint in “The New Sounds of Music”:
Download Ringtone Of Vodafone I Guess My Life An Open Book
But media company TDK has produced a program called Fona Style that appears to combine file sharing and ringtone creation, seemingly on the model of Xingtone, and is now available in the U.K. See “TDK Fone Styla Lets Users Rip, Upload Content to Handsets for Free,” DMEurope (24 May 2004), viewed online at on 18 August 2004.36. Alec Foege, “Going Gold? Maybe if Enough Cellphones Ring,” New York Times (31 August 2003).37. Scott Banerjee, “Xingtone Gains New Financing,” Billboard (19 June 2004).38. Zutaut’s background is in the film industry; he began as an actor in B–movies and comedies like Back to School (1986), Hardbodies 2 (1986), and The Big Picture (1989). After leaving the film industry, he became involved in retail and eventually moved into mobile–related applications. Through his brother Tom Zutaut, a well–known record executive with Elektra and Geffen, he was able to make contacts with the music industry, eventually leading to his work with Hollywood Records and Artemis Records. More recently Zutaut has become involved in a documentary film project dealing with the CIA’s coup and removal of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, which was arranged in response to Arbenz’s modest land reforms that threatened the profits of the United Fruit Company. Despite the clear legality of Xingtone, Zutaut has been portrayed as somewhat of a maverick in the mobile entertainment industry and as having created a “Napster of the mobile.” (Cited from “Xingtone’s Ringtones Zing Labels,“ Online Reporter, 15 March 2003.) However, one facet of the Xingtone software that belies such a description is that it is designed to be used by only one computer and one phone, presumably owned by the same person. Further information on the company can be found at , a collection of news reports on Xingtone posted on the company’s homepage. Much of the information here derives from an interview with Zutaut in May 2004.39. The company seems to have been founded in late 2003, marketing itself as selling software for converting MP3 files to ringtones. See “ToneThis Loads MP3 onto Cellphone,” viewed online at =news on 18 August 2004.40. See Steven Patrick, “RIM Out to Eradicate ‘Truetone’ Piracy Disease,” The Star (17 December 2004), viewed online at -techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2004/12/17/technology/9693246&sec=technology on 5 January 2005.41. See Weheliye, pp. 33–34. At least one Web site charting Latino/a trends notes that 29 percent download ringtones, as opposed to nine percent of the general U.S. population. Information viewed online at on 18 August 2004.42. Figures and information on global ringtone use are drawn primarily from Phil Hardy’s “Music Licensing Revenues on the Increase Driven by the Fast–Growing $3bn plus Mobile Music Market,” Music & Copyright (12 May 2004). One remarkable essay describing the political aspects of text messaging cultures in the Philippines is Vincente Rafael’s “The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the Contemporary Philippines,” Public Culture, volume 15, number 3 (Fall 2003), pp. 399–425.43. Ankeny, “The New Sounds of Music.”44. Sean discusses his support of for–pay online music in Hamish Mackintosh, “Talk Time: Jay Sean,” The Guardian (12 August 2004), viewed online at ,3605,1280757,00.html on 1 September 2004. Lessig’s ideal would be to provide faster and better for–pay online music services that would compete sufficiently well with free access so that file sharing would not have to be criminalized. See Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 296–304; thanks to Michael Denning for this reference. Kazaa itself seems to adopt a similar perspective by promoting legal, licensed content available through the Web site while still defending its facilitation of free file sharing. See Ankeny, “The New Sounds of Music.”46. See Patrick Burkart and Tom McCourt, “Infrastructure for the Celestial Jukebox,” Popular Music, volume 23, number 3 (August 2004), pp. 349–350. The authors argue that the term first appeared in Paul Goldstein’s book Copyright’s Highway (1994), in which a broad, pay–per–transaction Gesamtapparat was imagined (p. 349).47. Brad Smith, “Multimedia Unplugged,” Wireless Week, (15 May 2004). More recently, Nokia has decided to withdraw from marketing a TV phone for the time being, despite the company’s recent demonstration of the technology in Singapore. The company argues that the problems lie less in the technology and infrastructure and more in constructing a business model for connecting the TV phone to the media/TV industry and the wireless world. See Brad Smith, “Nokia Cans TV Phone but not TV Plans,” Wireless Week, (15 July 2004).48. Flynn, “The Cellphone’s Next Makeover.”49. Joe Bant, “Music Downloads Sans PC,” Wireless Week, (15 August 2004).50. Smith, “Multimedia Unplugged.”51. “An Interview with James Winsoar,” viewed online at _with_james_winsoar.htm on 19 August 2004.52. Ibid.53. Andy Riga, “Job Has a Nice Ring to It,” The Gazette (Montreal), 24 May 2003.54. As discussed an interview with Keith Nowak in May 2004.55. “Craze is a Key to Success,” Express & Star (16 August 2003), viewed online at -bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=18&num=39626 on 19 August 2004. Also, I should note that my characterization of other companies following Winsoar’s business model of creating ringtone provider companies is a generalization that assumes the priority of Winsoar’s company in the business. Whether or not Winsoar actually created the first ringtone company in the U.K. or even the world (and it is not clear to me that another company did not hit upon the idea independently around the same time or even beforehand), my characterization does not necessarily assume the direct influence of Winsoar on these other companies. Instead, Winsoar appears here as a figure for a certain kind of enterprise, a small, independently owned and managed ringtone and mobile entertainment provider.56. Listing viewed at on 19 August 2004.57. In Andrew Ross, Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor (New York: New Press, 2004), p. 198.58. Emily Turrettini, “Behind the Ringtone Scene,” Ringtonia.com (25 July 2003), viewed online at on 19 August 2004. Relatively little can be gleaned from the Web sites of Melodi Ltd. (now Melodi Media) and Soundonweb, respectively and “GoFresh Launches Music Album as Ringtones,” Moco News (26 April 2004), viewed online at _04_26.shtml#006906 on 19 August 2004.60. Emily Turrettini, “Original Ringtones by Marin Plante,” Ringtonia.com (20 May 2003), viewed online at on 19 August 2004.61. Jason Ankeny, “Lee Oskar,” Wireless Review (1 April 2002).62. See “Deep Purple Plot Album,” UltimateGuitar.com, posted 2 November 2004, viewed online at -guitar.com/news/general_music_news/deep_purple_plot_album.html?200411020414 on 19 November 2004.63. It is worth noting that hip-hop artists like the Wu–Tang Clan and Mobb Deep have been promoting their music via ringtones at least as early as 2001. The mobile entertainment firm Zingy promoted the artists’ 2001 albums by releasing ringtones of album tracks in advance of the albums’ release dates. See Benny Evangelista, “Ring Tones Raise a Buzz,” San Francisco Chronicle (7 December 2001).64. Jeff Leeds, “The Guy from Green Day Says He Has Your Mother on the Cellphone,” New York Times (18 August 2004). Leeds also notes that promotion through ringtones is fast becoming the norm for artists and that many artists have agreed to sell their music as ringtones after having resisted doing so (like U2).65. In addition to mirroring the widening gulf between most corporate employees and upper–level executives, this pattern is also reminiscent of the academic labor market, in which “star” academics are courted by prestigious institutions while casual laborers supply most of the teaching and research labor power. On the academic star system, see Jonathan VanAntewerpen and David L. Kirp, “Star Wars: New York University,” In: David Kirp (editor). Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 66–89.66. See the discussion, for example, of a remarkable, but now defunct, Web site for posting remixes of songs by Bjork (www.arktikos.com) in Matthew Mirapaul, “Arts Online: Why Just Listen to Pop When You Can Mix Your Own?” New York Times (20 August 2001). Another Web site ( -in-the-park.com/bjork/, viewed on 1 September 2004) includes a selection of one person’s favorite remixes from the original remix Web site.67. Viewed at _hindi_bollywood_ringtones.htm on 19 August 2004.68. See “Ringtone Music Piracy Flourishes in Asia” and “RIM Out to Eradicate ‘Truetone’ Piracy Disease.”69. Thanks to Nandini Deo and Madhura Gopinath for providing the translations of the film’s and song’s Hindi titles and lyrics.70. Sudipto Dey, “Think Twice before you Remix Songs,” Times of India (8 November 2003).71. See Ad Crable, “Trashing Your Cell Phone,” Lancaster New Era (15 April 2004) on recycling cell phones. The author also notes that a recent FCC ruling, allowing phone number transferring between different cell phones and from land lines to cell phones, requires the purchase of a new phone — resulting in guaranteed profits for handset manufacturers and further creation of electronics waste. For a remarkably multilayered treatment of e–waste, see Andrew Ross, “The Flight of Silicon Wafers,” in his Low Pay, High Profile, pp. 157–173.72. “What is the Most Annoying Mobile Phone Ring Tone You Have Heard?” MX (Melbourne, Australia), 16 November 2001.73. In basic music theoretical terms, the two phrases constitute a period, or an antecedent and consequent phrase (two musical phrases that have something like a question–answer relationship). The first phrase ends without the tonic note in the melody, thus closing with an imperfect authentic cadence, and the second phrase responds to this relatively inconclusive phrase ending by starting the same music again and finishing with the tonic note and tonic harmony (or a perfect authentic cadence).74. Thanks to Steven Rings for the information on the advertisements, which he watched while in Europe in 1995. Rings has also mentioned to me that several classical guitarists might be employed as ringtone composers and arrangers, given the obscurity of the Tarrega piece. Rings noted that he had heard a ringtone arrangement of a melody from Mozart’s The Magic Flute that was clearly taken not from the original work but from a blander arrangement of the tune by the early 19th century Spanish guitar composer Fernando Sor. (This arrangement was part of the latter’s Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart from “The Magic Flute”, op. 9.)75. Burkeman, “Fellowship of the Rings.”76. Keith Nowak, spokesman for Nokia, recounted the dates and basic details of this history to me in a telephone interview in May 2004.77. For example, Andy Riga, in “Job Has a Nice Ring to It,” states, “Cell phones come with a standard ring tone, plus a few alternatives, usually bits of music no longer protected by copyright, such as fragments from Bolero or Carmen.”78. Uimonen, “‘Sorry, Can’t Hear You!’,” p. 52. Gavin Naden, “Real Life: What Your Ring Tone Says about You,” Sunday Mirror (13 May 2001). The psychiatrist interviewed for the article was named Dr. Glenn Wilson.79. See endnote 3.80. One might argue, however, that with the appearance of the downloadable ringtone, such changes weren’t necessary, but it did take at least a year or two between the first appearance of the ringtone and a ringtone format that was uploadable.81. Uimonen, drawing on the work of T. Kopomaa, argues that from 1990-1995 cell phones were mass–marketed, and then since 1995 should be best understood as diversified mass market products (pp. 52–53).82. An excellent discussion of the impact of Western music on the rest of the world is found in Bruno Nettl, The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival (New York: Schirmer, 1985). Another version of the globalization of classical music would be its corporate mass–culturization and resulting control by global music conglomerates, as found in Norman Lebrecht, Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers, and Corporate Politics (Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub. Group, 1997), esp. pp. 394–414.83. Porter discusses the physical and technical limitations of the monophonic cell phone melody, as well as cell phone music generally, in “Phone it In!” Matthew Mirapaul also mentions the three–octave ranges of early cell phones in “Composer Plans to Strike Up the Cell Phones,” New York Times (16 August 2001).84. Quoted in Ankeny, “The New Sounds of Music.”85. A musicological treatment of organicism can be found in Ruth Solie’s “The Living Work: Organicism and Musical Analysis,” 19th–Century Music, volume 4, number 2 (Fall 1980), pp. 147–156.86. Brian Hyer, “Tonality,” New Grove Dictionary of Music (Second edition), viewed online at =music.28102.1 on 21 August 2004.87. Schenker makes this point in a highly civilizationalist way, arguing that Western music before tonality was extremely primitive, in Harmony, Oswald Jonas (editor), Elisabeth Mann Borgese (translator) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954 [1906]), pp. 134–137. Schenker is a fascinating and contradictory figure. Almost a modernist as a scholar and an arch–conservative in his musical tastes and politics, perhaps his contradictions are best encapsulated in his status, towards the end of his life, as a Jew attracted to aspects of Nazi ideology. An early piece on Schenker that situates him in relation to early structuralist thinkers is Charles Rosen’s, “Concealed Structures: Heinrich Schenker, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobsen” (originally a book review in 1971), in his book Romantic Poets, Critics, and Other Madmen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 182–211. Thanks to Roman Ivanovitch for this reference. For a lucid and insightful discussion of Schenker’s political views, see Andrea Reiter, “‘Von der Sendung des deutschen Genies’: The Music Theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) and Cultural Conservatism,” In: Rüdiger Görner (editor). Resounding Concerns (Munich: Iudicium, 2003), pp. 135–159.88. See Leonard Meyer, “The Perception and Cognition of Complex Music,” in his book Music, The Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth–Century Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 266–293, esp. pp. 283–293. Meyer doesn’t use the term “tonal music” and only discusses the music of composers like Bach or Wagner as instances of such redundant music that allows for musical communication. Meyer’s main purpose in the essay is to argue that total serial music is a style of music that does not include such redundancy and is therefore very difficult, or even impossible, to understand perceptually. Thanks to Eric Drott for this reference.89. Here, C4 is designated as middle C, B4 is the B above middle C, and C5 is the C one octave above middle C. 2ff7e9595c
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