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Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Listen to my Cellie Playin Nelly and R. Kelly
Terry the Intern's Guest Rant of the Week: A couple of days ago during my 1 hour commute, I heard a story on NPR about Billboard's latest venture: Top 20 Hot
Ringtones. The new chart launches Nov 06 and seems to lean heavily towards R&B/Hip-Hop, right in line with The Billboard Hot 100 Singles.

The facts: Even in a market saturated with polyphonic mobile phones, most ringtones are little more than the MIDI equivalent of a song. They cost 2-3x as much as the full track on iTunes (etc), and it's still a global $3bil industry.

I can't say I blame Billboard - it's interesting information that they won't have any problem selling. I can't say I blame the groups that sell these ringtones, either - it's one heck of a moneymaker. I just don't get it. My phone came with several nice polyphonic ringtones, and I downloaded a simple utility that will convert any WAV file into the appropriate format for my phone, but the novelty wore off really quick. Listening to the same 10sec of a crappy rendition of an already-overplayed song just seems maddening. ...especially in the middle of a crowded movie theater. Why not save your money and leave it on vibrate?

Alice Responds: Terry - download Xingtone. You can make your own polymorphic tones from any MP3 audio file, including the sound of Bill screaming at you! It's free to try and $19.95 for unlimited. Send the tone straight to your phone and screw the outlandish charges per tone the carriers are using to fleece us dry. I love it!

# Permalink Posted at 10:47 PM 5 comments Email this Link

Comments on this Item:

If you have an LG VX4400 phone, you can rename any song.mp3 to song.mid with the right cable and some Open Source Software upload it to the phone. I've got 8 or 9 clips that are each 20 seconds or so long on my phone right now. I've also been able to make mp3/midi ringtones that are much louder than the polyphonic ringers included or downloaded on the phone.

# posted by Anonymous 11:35 PM

I've got the Sanyo SCP-4900 on SprintPCS. You can't transfer files to it (apparently), but I have the "wireless web", so I just downloaded the files I created.

Alice - I don't recall the name of my utility (I think it's from Qualcomm? Can that be right?) but that's basically what it did. I converted WAV files to some Q?? format (QCF? Something like that) and then emailed them to the phone. Now, when I get a text message, I hear Strong Bad saying "Stiny! Bring me a danish!"

It was The Coolest Thing Ever for a while, but may I reiterate that the novelty wore off pretty quick.

I'll bet the Bill Screaming ringtone would DEFINITELY chart, though. Get on it! ;)

# posted by Terry 5:45 AM

I know a guy in Germany who just recorded his own voice saying "Telephone." Guaranteed no one else has it....

# posted by Anonymous 6:48 AM

Great to see the discussion. If anyone wants to demo Xingtone, feel free to get in touch. Eric (eric@xingtone.com)

# posted by Anonymous 10:12 AM

Nelly is a big St. Louis Rams fan and he has performed at the pre-game on several occasions.

Nothing is quite like seeing him doing his act in front of 65,000 Middle aged white men.

At the end when he does his big finish, you can hear the crickets cherping for miles.

# posted by midmofan 12:17 PM

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