Ringtone

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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with ring (telephone), ringing signal, mobile music and ringtone maker (Discuss)

A ringtone or ring tone is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. The term, however, is most often used to refer to the customizable sounds available on mobile phones. This facility was originally provided so that people would be able to determine when their phone was ringing when in the company of other mobile phone owners.

A phone only rings when a special "ringing signal" is sent to it. For regular telephones, the ringing signal is a 90-volt, 20-hertz, AC wave generated by the switch to which the telephone is connected. For mobile phones, the ringing signal is a specific, radio-frequency signal.

The first commercial mobile ring tones were created and delivered in Finland in 1998 when a Finnish mobile operator Radiolinja (today Elisa) started their downloadable mobile ring tone service called Harmonium invented by Vesa-Matti Paananen.^[1] The Harmonium contained both tools for general public to create monophonic ring tones and a mechanism to deliver them over-the-air (OTA) via SMS to a mobile handset and to bill customer on their phone bill. The service concept spread quickly in Europe and Asia and developed to be a multi billion industry globally.^[2] A ring tone service was one of the very first successful m-commerce services and contained also social media aspects like composing, sharing and rating ring tones. The Harmonium also created quickly a need for high quality professional ring tones and commercial ring tone libraries.

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The rise of video games has also contributed to the popularity of ring tones.^[3] On August 5, 2006, the BBC reported that "free ringtones" was the eighth most likely search term to return links to malware.^[4]

1 Features
2 Polyphonic ringtones
3 Ringtone formats
4 Criticism
5 See also
6 External links
7 References

[R & B Ringtones] Features

Whereas older telephones simply used a pair of bells for the ringer, modern ring tones have become extremely diverse, leading to phone personalization and customization.

Newer mobile phones allow the users to associate different ring tones for different phone book entries. Taking advantage of these features, a new Ringtone Maker trend has emerged. For example, websites like Phonezoo and Phone Sherpa let users make ringtones from the music they already own (MP3, CD etc.) and upload directly to their mobile phone with no limit on the number of songs uploaded. In addition to the cost benefits, a key feature is the music editor that lets the user easily pick the part of the song they wish to set as a ringtone. Such services automatically detect the phone settings to ensure the best file type and format. There are however providers who have already edited and trimmed the song for you.

Others also allow users to create their own music tones, either with a "melody composer" or a sample/loop arranger (such as the MusicDJ in many Sony Ericsson phones). However, these use native formats only available to one particular phone model or brand. Although other formats, such as MIDI or MP3, are often supported; they must be downloaded to the phone before they can be used as a normal ring tone. Commercial ring tones take advantage of this functionality, which has led to the success of the mobile music industry. Southern rapper Chamillionaire was the first to have a ring tone go 3x platinum for the hit single "Ridin." He now has his own category on certain phones.^{[citation needed]}

The latest innovation is the sing tone, a type of karaoke ring tone where a user’s voice recording is adjusted to be both in time and in tune then mixed with a backing track to make a user-created ring tone.

An alternative to a ring tone for mobile phones is a vibrating alert. It may be useful:

In noisy environments
In places where ring tone noise would be disturbing
For the hearing impaired

[R & B Ringtones] Polyphonic ringtones

A polyphonic ringtone is a ringtone that makes use of polyphony.

The first polyphonic ringtones used sequenced recording methods such as MIDI. Such recordings specify what instrument should play a note at a given time, but the actual instrument sound is dependent upon the playback device.

Later, it became possible to use digital audio recordings as ringtones. The recordings might be of music, speech, or other sounds. Mainstream music recordings used as ringtones are sometimes called "realtones" or "truetones". Real tones, which are often excerpts from pop songs, have become popular as ringtones. A recent innovation is the singtone, whereby the user’s voice is recorded to a popular track and then “tuned-up” automatically to sound in key. This can then be downloaded as a ringtone or sent to another user’s mobile phone.

[R & B Ringtones] Ringtone formats

eMelody - Older Ericsson format.
iMelody - Most new phones that don't do Nokia's Smart Messaging are using this format.
KWS - Kyocera's ringer format.
MID / MIDI - Popular sound format.
Morse code - Text files with a .MORSE extension get converted into morse code songs
MOT - An older ringer format for Motorola phones.
MP3 - Some phones support ringtones that are mp3 format.
Nokia / SCKL / OTT - Nokia Smart Messaging format. Nokia phones can receive ringtones as a text message. Ringtone tools can create these text messages. This allows anyone with a compatible phone to load their own ringtones in without a data cable. There are other phones besides Nokia that use this.
PDB - Palm database. This is the format used to load ringtones on PDA phones such as the Kyocera 6035 and the Handspring Treo
QCP - File format generated by Qualcomm PureVoice software.
RTTTL - A popular text format for ringtones.
RTX - Similar to rtttl with some advanced features. Also the octaves are different on rtx.
Samsung1 & Samsung2 - Samsung keypress format.
Siemens Keypress - Can create and read in a Siemens text file format.
Siemens SEO - Siemens SEO binary format.
SMAF - Yamaha music format that combines MIDI with instrument sound data (ala Module files). Filenames have the extension "MMF."
AAC - Some phones like the Sony Ericsson W810i support ring tones in ".m4a" AAC format.

[R & B Ringtones] Criticism

Ring tone advertising campaigns have become hugely popular, though they have also attracted a great deal of criticism. For example, in May 2005 Jamster! bought 73,716 spots across all TV channels for the Crazy Frog advertisements.

This article documents a current court case.
Information may change rapidly as the case progresses.

In April 2005, the law firm of Callahan, McCune and Willis filed a class action lawsuit against Jamster! on behalf of a San Diego father and his 10-year-old daughter.^[5] The lawsuit alleges that Jamster! scammed cellular telephone customers through the use of fraudulent and deceptive advertisements. The ads in question offered one free ring tone to cell phone customers who responded to the ad via text message, but failed to inform users that they would be subscribed to a monthly service.^[6] The lawsuit is pending as of March 2007.

On July 20, 2005, the Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN), a non-profit California consumer advocacy organization, filed a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) against Cingular Wireless for the unauthorized billing of non-communications related charges, such as ring tones.^[7] UCAN claimed that Cingular billed its customers for Jamster! and other similar ring tone services without providing customers with the notice, opt-in, and proof of authorization requirements necessary for such charges.^[8] UCAN further charged Cingular with violating numerous CPUC requirements by consistently telling customers with questions about non-communications service charges on their wireless phone bill that Cingular has no responsibility and cannot assist customers with their inquiries.^[9] UCAN and Cingular reached a settlement on October 19, 2006, which resulted in stronger notification and authorization requirements for Cingular regarding non-communications charges and also required Cingular to institute a ready means to address billing issues and cancel wireless content services, such as ring tones.^[10]