The Rise and Fall of Music Ringtones: A Statistical Analysis | Hacker News Reader

The Rise and Fall of Music Ringtones: A Statistical Analysis

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Around 2007 I was talking to music labels about customized ringtones, working with people that could modify vocals in songs to change names and such. The idea being songs could be personalized with people's names and business names, and coming from the labels that own the songs, everyone would be happy and making revenue. I spoke with pretty much all the business development people at the major recording labels, even had a champion biz dev guy from Warner Records promoting the idea, but the larger recording industry socially hated the people in the ringtone industry. They loved the revenues, but the people they disliked and were quietly working to end ringtones simply because they hated rubbing elbows with them, they'd get in physical altercations with the ringtone people. I remember hearing "the crazies of hip hop are nothing compared to the insane ringtone crews."

What a shame, now some people are archiving ringtones on Youtube, and I just learn how many bangers / talented composition are there for this genre.

The deeper issue that nobody seems to be picking up here is the fact that here was a billion dollar industry that was dismantled by the people within because they socially disliked one another. Professional failure of the most human and petty and pathetic kinds. This is humanity, we'd rather abandon and destroy than interact with those we socially dislike.

If you don't even trust that someone respects some basic limits you don't want to be engaged in a fight for the profit from some project every year. Getting nothing out of the project is not the worst outcome.

The article doesn't mention the elephant in the room - iPhone. The fall of ringtones and the rise of iPhone isn't a mere coincidence. The feature phones had too little features, everything on them was controlled by the provider, and thus ringtones were something noticeable, one of the few available ways for customization, a way for that brick to do something else. With introduction of iPhone the ring customization - just use any sound file, etc, no payment - became just a very small insignificant feature drowned by a lot of other functionality like full featured web browsing, etc. and thus it lost user's attention. I don't remember anybody doing ring customization on iPhone or any other smartphone besides picking from the preloaded list of rings.

While I do agree the iPhone was the major cause, I think this was an intentional move by Apple. During the early years, iTunes let you make your own ringtones for free using songs in your library. GEICO even had a novelty ringtone online you could download to your iPhone for free. Eventually, Apple started selling premade ringtones (for the same price as the full song!), after which the built-in iTunes functionality was removed.

You can still make a ringtone for free by renaming an m4a to .m4r and then dragging it to your phone.

You can also make ringtones right on the phone using Garageband.

I think custom ring tones were on their way out before the first iPhone was released. Personally, hearing a portion of a song you love daily is the quickest way to ruin the song. Ring tones were a fad IMO. A piece of bling that wasn’t worth the cost.

> Personally, hearing a portion of a song you love daily is the quickest way to ruin the song.

I sort of agree with you. A few years ago, I joined a new team at work that had a really bad on-call rotation (lots of tech debt, bad TSGs, etc.). I got paged in the middle of the night many times, and I was always stressed about how the hell to resolve the issues. So I developed a bad stress reaction to my ringtone.

After I left that team, I changed my ringtone to the theme from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. It always makes me smile now when I get a phone call.

Ringtones didn't cost anything to anyone with 5 minutes which is all the time it took to take an MP3 and copy it to your phone. Songs getting tiresome isn't a problem when you can change it every week, but there's also no reason to limit yourself to songs either. Any sound or bit of audio can be saved as or converted to an MP3 and made into a ringtone. Personally, I'm fond sounds or BGM from video games and sound effects from old cartoons.

The reason is more that songs are really not a good fit for ringtone. The compositions, duration, melody, and sound must all be setup differently.

Plus, the iPhone shipped with its own, very distinguishable ringtones which pretty soon signaled to everyone “I have an iPhone”. And the small switch to silence it was already a feature on the first iPhone, became a standard for all smartphones and vibration only turned out to be a convenient alternative. That said, the current ringtones on my phone are: -Nokia Attraction -Nokia Orient -the ringtone from Luigis mansion 3 -You’re so cool from True Romance and yes, putting them on the phone with garage band is a pain.

I knew the ringtone was officially dead when I watched an Apple-produced show on AppleTV+ and they used a vibration noise as a sound effect for a phone ringing.

I've noticed in a lot of newer movies, people's phones only vibrate and they always notice it and grab it (unless the script says they miss the call/text for plot reasons). Of course, the scene is always quiet at that moment, so you can hear the vibration effect and believe that the character does too. In real life, it doesn't often work that way.

It's become almost rude to have a ringtone these days.

There are places where one should mute the phone, like cinemas, offices, cafes, etc. Other than that, I'd like to hear when someone is trying to reach me.

An US thing?

Here in the Netherlands it would seen as very peculiar to have a ringtone enabled.

Here in Germany (actual residence), Portugal and Spain (as my home culture), Italy and Greece (relatives), it is still quite common, unless people are at work, or at places like cinema and theater.

The point is that it's not only seen as odd in the US. That there are counterexamples where it's normal doesn't change that.

Severance? Or are there others too?!

It's been a while since I've done it, but I think it's still possible, though a pain in the ass, to put custom ringtones on an iPhone. It involved renaming a .m4a audio file with to have a .m4r extension and then somehow getting it on the phone. Worth it to have the opening to "Eye of the Tiger" as a ringtone.

"Eye of the Tiger" is a choice ringtone and I like the story of how it got to be famous, since 'another one bites the dust' didn't make the cut. So sad you have to go through hoops to get it on your phone. If there was 'justice' in this world, you would be able to ask Siri to set 'eye of the tiger' as your ringtone and that be accomplished with no difficulty.

In Android land we haven't got quite that ease of use, to my knowledge, however, I always set a song from my music library of MP3 files to be the ringtone, only changing this when I get a new phone every few years.

For me, a custom ringtone means it is my phone and not someone else's that is ringing. This means that I do answer, even if quite distracted, and this has been very helpful at times. I have tried a few songs over the years, and a relatively calm intro helps, so, to others, it sounds like music easing in rather than a ringtone. I can catch it before the bass drops.

I assume the grass is always greener in the land of Apple, but, it surprises me that they don't make custom ringtones easy. I thought Apple was for the creative types and the free thinkers that would care for such things.

Re the article, just thought I should share an intrusive thought: crazy frog had a p3nis. Once noticed, it cannot be unnoticed. :Shudder:

> I thought Apple was for the creative types and the free thinkers that would care for such things.

I always thought Apple was for people that thought customization and configuration should be avoided. Apple will pre-configure it in the optimal way and determine which things you should be allowed to do.

This has not been a true statement about Apple in more than a quarter century.

s/in the optimal way //

I also set a custom ringtone for the important people in my life. If my wife, kid or boss call me, I will know it by the sound. Super useful.

Yeah, I did that ages ago and it’s transferred along every time I get a new phone. I assume you could still do it again from a new file but haven’t tried it in a long time either. Also did it for an incoming text tone.

I did that a while ago, but it only works if you sync phone with iTunes and it was not working last time I tried.

I liked having ringtones for certain family members, as a parent I usually leave my ringtone on (because if my teen is giving me an actual phone call it’s usually something wrong with the car she is driving so it’s high stakes), but anywhere out with the family it’s on vibrate.

The upcoming major update to iOS 26 makes this something users can easily do with an MP3 or M4A audio file under 30 seconds long.

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/17/ios-26-use-as-ringtone-...

You could make ring tones with garbage band?! Since 2013?!

Heh, I was just looking up stuff from the era and found the original discussion of same: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-itunes-how-to-add-r...

On Android I 'member having to set some special metadata (`ANDROID_LOOP=true`) to make it loop cleanly: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36906015

Not sure if this issue persists because I'm boring and am still using the same ringtone I made back in 2011 :v https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNSHhrYsudI

  gbsplay -qqq -o stdout "Gameboy Camera (1998)(Nintendo).gbs" 48 48 | \
  sox -t raw -r 88.2k -e signed -b 16 - -t wav - | \
  oggenc - -t "Trippy-H" -a "Hirokazu 'Hip' Tanaka" -l "Pocket Camera" -c "ANDROID_LOOP=true" -o Trippy-H.ogg

It works on Android without any special setting.

You can do it, I did it fairly recently with a phone I did a full wipe of.

You need to manually open the phone entry in iTunes and look for the tones category in there, and drag the files into it. You used to be able to put the tones directly into iTunes, but now it's a matter of dragging the files directly to the phone's tone category itself.

Yup, pain in the ass but quite possible. Check out this 100gecs ringtone I made as an example (warning — autoplay ringtone audio):

https://freezine.xyz/2/my-boys-got-his-own-ring-tone/index.h...

Meh. Bad Apple music box version. https://musicboxmaniacs.com/explore/melody/bad-apple-full-pl...

The true way to impose your will on others is to set music ringbacks (the sound the caller hears while they wait for you to pick up). Still popular in India and China, I hear.

You used to be able to do this in Canada, for a fee. Back when carriers tried to milk their customers for every customization possible. They've since learned they can do the same without bothering to offer anything in return.

I wish I could impose callers a "ringback captcha": if you want my phone to ring, you have to solve this challenge to prove that you are human.

It would be nice to just have an extension.

like "at the tone press 42 to get through"

except you don't need to provide the instructions, people know to do it.

You can do that pretty easy with twilio. It would probably even be free or effectively free based on mere personal levels of calls.

Google voice screening is sort of like that.

Unfortunately I'm one of those privacy-conscious people that would only accept this as a local app on my phone, without a surveillance capitalism giant being able to eavesdrop all my calls as a man-in-the-middle as a side effect.

I only use my Google voice number for basically non-personal contacts, like my bank or shopping, etc. That way when you get an unknown call from a business, it will usually be coming from an unknown number and thus the screening will be in place.

The screening on my personal phone is such that I will have any person that I expect to be calling already in my directory so that will be identifiable immediately

I had no idea this was even something you could customize.

I’ve encountered it here in South Africa too, it’s a service provider “feature”, in no way controlled by your phone.

It’s been many years since I’ve encountered it, but was quite scummy because while you’re waiting for the other person to pick up, you’d hear some music and then a voice over saying to press a number now to add it to your own number, for a recurring fee of course.

I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the people paying for it didn’t intentionally “sign up”, but are just not educated enough to understand what happened or notice their prepaid credit being slowly whittled away by rubbish like this.

The amount of worthless “value added services” pushed onto the poorest here by cellphone service providers is sickening.

It's just hold music and forking the call at a switch. You can do it yourself with two extra lines and a pbx.

If done correctly, the call doesn't count as connected while it's ringing. 'Early media' aka 'late billing'

Not that it makes a big difference anymore when most people are on unmetered calling.

Many European operators offer this as well, or used to at least.

It isn't!

Maybe it is in China and India, though. I shudder to contemplate the complexity of that switching system, but ... astonishment awaits..?

It certainly was in the US, they were called ring back tones https://www.vice.com/en/article/remember-when-you-called-som...

Well OK, astonished then!

I think there has to be some dramatic oversimplification in the description though. Telecom signaling is still a network level event, even in mobile networks. The receiving network does not typically provide audio to the caller until the call is complete.

But hey, what a terrible idea! I'm glad to have been old enough in that period (2004-2008) that no one I knew would foist such a thing on a caller.

The telcom keyword is 'early media'. Audio before the call is answered and billing starts.

The receiving network “connects” the call and starts providing audio.

I rock the ringtone from the Dude's briefcase phone. Ride of the Valkyries is also a fan favorite. A colleague had the Star Wars Imperial March — but only for calls from his wife.

I'm never giving up my purupuru pururin ringtone[1].

[1]https://youtube.com/watch?v=nRpSRP0l4bo

Didn't even have to click the link for that earworm to be stuck in my head.

I thought we all did the modem squeal. https://youtu.be/vvr9AMWEU-c

Do we have same boss? Are you in satellite industry…

As someone who unfortunately worked for a ringtone vendor for a shot period, the main thrust of the "industry" was mis-selling a hidden/deceptive "subscription" service to children, which was billed through automatic premium rate mobile phone charges. It was a con-job where phone companies and shady ringtone companies conspired tp rip off children who were too embarrassed to tell their parents they screwed up by unknowingly entering into the subscription (by texting something to some number), and couldn't work out how to cancel the subscription (because this was made insanely hard). And then the next month they would get charged again. These people were scum.

also - they never paid the music publishers, as the purchaser/subscriber obtained the ringtone they purchased/subscribed for, but rarely "cashed in" the subscription "credits" for additional ringtones, and the music publishers were only paid for ringtones actually downloaded ... so it was also a con on the music industry.

Something missing from this analysis (though probably not critical to it at all) is the rise of people leaving their phones on Do Not Disturb, especially in the US where spam calls are rampant. I have notifications turned on for maybe 1-2 days out of each month, which means I rarely hear my ringtone. It typically just vibrates.

> people leaving their phones on Do Not Disturb, especially in the US where spam calls are rampant.

The solution for that is to record a few seconds of silence, save that as an MP3 and set that as the default ringtone. Then, select whatever ringtone you actually want to have to the few contacts you actually want to get calls from. Your phone never bothers you when spammers call, but you get pleasantly notified whenever a call from someone you care about comes in.

That’s a weird hack today. Most phones seem to have a setting for it now. I have it on on my iPhone, it’s not “focus”, but I can’t recall how I turned it on. Only my favorites ring. Also, my phone is always on silent so I really mean “vibrate”.

Settings > Apps > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers

As feature phones with mp3 support and especially smart phones became more popular, people were able to make their own music ringtones with music they downloaded from wherever. It's been an option in every phone I've used since like 2007.

The decline in sales seems to match up with the rise in popularity of smart phones.

There was a time when my main aim of a choosing a certain ringtone was to appear edgy and cool ... and how annoying and wrong was I!

A sample of bad ringtone (auto-tuned baby crying) which was trending back then (2007-2008) was [1]. Thankfully I never used it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVvFRzMWdL8

Neat, I never realized that this is what Major Lazer were referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DuTR-PY5lk&list=OLAK5uy_mxf... (2009)

So much nostalgia,I use to love the drop from various rave and hardcore hits at the time, it just felt so tech. Alphazone Flashback for example: https://youtu.be/EWP3DC9utk0?si=rxI7nop6oqaHKtQQ&t=225

I felt like these song as rings tones went well with the optimism around technology at that time which I feel has just been crushed by internet giants and the rise of surveillance capitalism and social media.

There was something great about early phone based digital photography and it being offline, so convenient yet completely "yours" (for example).

Definitely don't feel as if it's all bad, but that optimism doesn't exist anymore in my opinion.

Wow, they completely missed the two elephants in the room:

1. Downloading MP3s stopped being something easy and free around this time.

2. While the popularity of iPhone was exploding, Apple didn't allow you use any MP3s as ringtones, even if you went through all the steps to get your MP3 files into your iPhone. The Apple walled garden said no, you're holding MP3s wrong, and that was the end of it.

Early iPhones actually did allow custom ringtones, but required converting MP3s to AAC/M4R format and syncing through iTunes with specific file length restrictions (30 seconds max). This technical friction compared to drag-and-drop MP3 transfers on other phones likely accelerated the ringtone market's decline.

You can still make custom ring tones this way if you have access to a Mac laptop. You make a m4a file, rename it to m4r, and transfer it to the phone using finder.

I remember when cellphones first allowed on-phone media, and companies like verizon prevented you from putting your own media on your phone.

and apple saved people from that...

but then at some point, apple music came along and deprecated local music. (enough that many people were confused and switched to apple cloud music)

Android removed it from the UI not long afterwards, though they never actually removed the functionality - any mp3 would show up as if it was a built-in ringtone if you created a directory with the right name on your sdcard and put the files in there.

I just went into the sound settings on my two-year-old Pixel, and under “Phone ringtone” there was a selector that was perfectly willing to pop up a file picker and accept a random MP3 file I had lying around. It’s more friction than I think is reasonable for a non-power-user feature, but if you expect the function to be there, you’ll find it by choosing the obvious-looking option at each step.

Apple ring tones were a bit of a status symbol at the time so people mostly kept them

Ringtones were people playing with their devices when the didn’t really do much. Once smartphones took off, we had better distractions

Sometimes I feel the curse of technology is how fast it moves. As soon as you start to enjoy something, it’s gone and yes I can go back to using a flip phone but then you’re not really “competitive” or “compatible” with the modern world.

I guess this will only become More true with “AI” maybe humans won’t be able to keep up at all ?

I haven't set up a custom ringtone in years since I don't receive that many calls nowadays, but I having been setting up the "Hey!" notification sound from the Google Nexus phone on all my newer, non-Google phones that followed it.

Honestly, on an iPhone, I wish I could completely mute/disable the Phone app, so when it calls it doesn't overtake whatever you are doing, or just delete it.

I have a much better hypothesis, and I will not support it with an errorprone statistical analysis. Custom ringtones are less popular because phone UI developers made it harder to customize ringtones.

I have long wanted this[1] for my ringtone...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA-PXhRHPnE&t=388s

> In 2006, annual U.S. ringtone sales increased by nearly $400 million, then rose another $400 million the following year, eventually peaking in 2007. This period saw industry pundits forecasting a $10 billion ringtone market that would single-handedly save the music industry.

Also 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMupng6KQeE “'Cause over there there's broken bones / There's only music so that there's new ringtones”

And disappointed to see an article spend so much time talking about Crazy Frog with zero mention of Crazy Frog's penis lol https://annoyingthing.net/wiki/Censorship

I am definitely on the first group, no need to play that tune ever again.

Kids, we used to type notes in T9 keyboards for these tunes.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Dhama Short ringtone playing in the background all day long as AI robocallers call around the clock

The only ringtone I downloaded in last decade is the silent ringtone.

Little did you know, that's John Cage's 4'33

I hope you didn't pirate it.

[flagged]

> anyone who isn’t an emergency responder with a phone that makes noise a selfish asshole

Please don't fulminate on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Today, I consider anyone who isn’t an emergency responder with a phone that makes noise a selfish asshole.

That is a terrible thing to judge people for, and you are wrong for doing so.

Funny you said that. I have not heard a phone ring around me in a very long time. Between 2004-2012 that's all you heard in public. In the latter part of that, music ringtones just wasn't a thing any longer. It was the generic iPhone ringtone

> Today, I consider anyone who isn’t an emergency responder with a phone that makes noise a selfish asshole.

You’re probably getting a lot of false positives. Is it ok to answer a vibrating phone around you, or do I need to leave the vicinity first?

[flagged]

> Try not to come off like a judgemental little bitch

Please don't respond to a bad comment with another bad comment. We need to avoid swipes like this, no matter what we're replying to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, my bad.

"You can create custom ringtones on your iPhone using GarageBand by importing audio, trimming it, and exporting it as a ringtone. First, you'll need the GarageBand app and optionally, an audio file or a song from your Apple Music library. Then, you can import the audio, trim it to under 30 seconds, and export it as a ringtone within GarageBand. Finally, you can set the ringtone in your iPhone's settings under "Sounds & Haptics". Here's a more detailed breakdown: 1. Get GarageBand and your audio: Download GarageBand from the App Store if you don't already have it. If you're using a song from Apple Music, make sure it's downloaded to your iPhone. You can also import audio files from your Files app or record audio directly in GarageBand. 2. Create a new project in GarageBand: Open GarageBand and create a new audio recording. Select the track type (e.g., Files, Music) and import your chosen audio. If using a song from your library, it must be downloaded to your iPhone. If the file is dimmed, it is either protected or not downloaded. 3. Edit the audio: Adjust the start and end points of the audio using the handles to create a 30-second or shorter ringtone. You can also use the precision editor for more fine-grained adjustments. If the ringtone is longer than 30 seconds, GarageBand will automatically shorten it when exporting. 4. Export as a ringtone: Tap the navigation button and then "My Songs". Select your project, tap the share button, and choose "Ringtone". Name your ringtone and tap "Export". 5. Set the ringtone: If the ringtone is less than 30 seconds, you can choose to use it as a standard ringtone, text tone, or assign it to a contact. To set it as your general ringtone, go to iPhone settings > Sounds & Haptics > Ringtone. You can also assign the ringtone to a specific contact. "

thanks chat gpt!

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