For the Last Time: Ringtones are NOT Music

by Mel Clarke. Published March 22, 2009.

Picture this just for one second:

You’re absolutely exhausted. You feel like your eyes are going to bleed at any second because they’ve been staring all day, in a dimly lit lecture room. Your ears are tired from listening. Your hands are throbbing because they’ve been frantically scrawling down indecipherable notes all day. You finally wobble yourself onto a bus and sit down.
Peace.
Just for one second.
Until someone’s phone goes off, and despite the noise interruption to your blissful second of peace – It’s also polluting your mind with the terrible quality, and more than likely, terrible song.

So why are people so compelled to putting music as ringtones on their phone?

Since those terrible brick mobile phones, the world has always been obsessed with personalising. Make what’s theirs, theirs, and entirely original. Naturally, this will never be the case. However, personalising somehow makes this experience more personal and more applicable to the person using the technology.

Polyphonic Ringtones

Then the newer phones came around, and we had no more of that mono ring tone junk. We had polyphonic ringtones! Oh joy, we now have tones and rhythm. Unfortunately, tones and rhythm, does not a good sound make. Often these ringtones were unrecognisable to anyone else other than the person who put them on their phone in the first place. The different tones, as well as the dodgy midi-file sounding melody absolutely trashed and ruined the fact that the tone was supposed to be about music – something which it has since strayed far away from.

Polyphonic and mono ringtones have become a laughing stock since the invention of ‘Tru-Tones’. Many of these ringtones have actually been used throughout gameshows, as well as pub trivia games. Guess the indecipherable ringtone!

True tones were the next butchery of real music. These were actual songs that played. And to be quite honest, I found more purpose in having something that didn’t sound like a song. These songs play, and the whole world can hear it. Unfortunately, it just sounds like someone has walked past with their mp3 player loud, or a car has driven past with their stereo turned up.

Okay, we get it, you’re just further letting the world know how totally ‘punk rawk’ you are, by having a Ramones song as your ringtone. Unfortunately for you, that’s a contradiction in terms. The Ramones would call shenanigans on such a device, and especially for butchering their music through a technology that was meant simply for the action of calling someone.

Confession Time

Here’s the part where I become a hypocrite by default. Yes, I have a song as my ringtone. In my defense, it’s the Mighty Boosh theme tune, which gives me giggles when I hear it. But why the rant, and the hypocritical confession?
It’s because my phone, in all its genius, didn’t come with a preloaded simple ‘ring-ring.’

Nothing.

Nothing simple whatsoever. I had the option to load my own song on there, or put up with the total tripe that was loaded.

So here’s where I say: Bring back the ring-ring, for the love of God. We stopped using records, we moved to CDs. We’ve stopped using CDs and now the entire world is digital. Stop using your music as a ringtone, in case that becomes the new mode of technology, and I have to hide away in exile to avoid hurting someone from ruining all that is holy, when it comes to music.

It was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Opinion. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.