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September 30, 2008

Longing for when phones just rang

By Tim Krohn

My colleague’s cell phone was going off on his desk. He wasn’t there.

I can’t say it was ringing. They don’t ring. They announce themselves with loud one-liners from South Park characters, clips of music or other annoying sounds.

His was playing something — maybe AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” I’m not sure — but it was also vibrating around in circles on the desktop.

I’m not sure if he had it set to “vibrate” and “annoying ringtone,” or if the phone was possessed. Or maybe it was just angry. A finely engineered piece of technology reduced to spewing dreadful music and being used to text-message “U R A DORK.”

I fondly considered tossing it out the window, watching it bounce onto South Second Street, its parts skipping across the lanes, crushed by a FedEx truck.

But I have an evaluation coming up, and I remember last year’s job review and something about working harder to be less cynical, caustic and critical toward my coworkers. So I suppose I should start trying to be nicer pretty soon.

Downloading your own special ringtone is supposed to bring the phone owner some type of individuality. But as a roomful of phones goes off, with 3 Doors Down and Coldplay competing with ringtones from Frank Sinatra and Buddy Holly, it seems to be more of a weird battle of the bands than a statement of originality.

The very act of playing your favorite songs on a cell phone never quite made sense to me. We’ve spent decades perfecting the stereo speakers but now hear much of our music on a crackling, 30-cent, monotone cell-phone speaker.

Still, ringtones are becoming a major corner of the music industry. They even give ringtone awards.

Hip-hop singer songwriter T-Pain won the BMI Urban Ringtone of the Year Award for his song: “I’m N Luv Wit A Stripper.”

Of course, when there’s money to be made, marketers will convince us that we just have to have new and better ringtones if we don’t want to be shunned and disgraced.

And they’ve marketed well. The downloading of ringtones worldwide in 2007 was $3.5 billion. According to ARC Group consultants, people are making more money in the sales of ringtones than in CD singles. Ringtones even outperform legal Internet download services like iTunes.

Still, I’m not convinced. Even with all the songs available, if you buy a ringtone, there are going to be a few million other people around the world with the same one. How individual can it be?

There is a service that lets you make your own ringtone. A karaoke ringtone service in which you sing your song to music of your choice and download it to your phone.

I might do a polka version of “I’m N Luv Wit A Stripper.”

Now that would be unique.



Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or

email him Tim by clicking here

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