Sun, May 23, 2004 page12

• Do mobile phone ringtones need a top 10 hits chart?

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  Until recently, your average record company executive probably reacted to the sound of a mobile phone blaring out its ringtone with the same weary resignation as the rest of us. Like reality TV or clipboard-clutching charity muggers, they were one of modern life's petty irritants. This year, however, your average record company executive is more likely to stifle a cheer every time he hears a tinny version of a chart hit bleeping from a nearby Nokia. According to some sources, the mobile phone ringtone has come to save the music industry.

  Three years ago, personalised ringtones were given away free on websites run by amateurs, who dedicated their spare time to programming mobiles to play Eminem songs instead of merely ringing -- a hobby that seemed to rank alongside translating the Bible into Klingon for pointlessness. Nobody would call r pointless today. Last year, mobile phone users spent US$3 billion on them.

  They account for 10 percent of the world's music market. Over the next 12 months, more and more new phones will play "mastertones" -- not bleepy electronic facsimiles of chart hits, but the hits themselves. Unlike the current monophonic and polyphonic ringtones, their sales will generate money for record companies.

  There is talk of mastertones ultimately replacing the ailing single format. While James Gillespie of the Official UK Chart Company, is cautious about rumors that sales of ringtones will soon be included in the singles chart -- "It's something we'll possibly look at in the next few years, but it's a big `possibly'" -- others are more bullish: after all, the British singles chart is soon to include legal downloads, and their sales are barely a fraction of ringtones.

  "It's only a matter of time before someone comes up with a mastertone chart," says Rob Wells, new media director of Universal Music UK, "and before that starts to carry more weight than the singles chart. I absolutely, definitely, believe 100 percent that ringtones should be included in the charts."

  Wells adds that "the speed with which ringtones took off surprised pretty much everyone," but with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see why they became so popular. Constantly changing your ringtone combines several pubescent obsessions at once: pop music, computer technology and playground one-upmanship. According to Paul Reilly, technical adviser on a terrifying-sounding publication called Ringtone Magazine, their appeal has spread far beyond schoolchildren.

  "We started putting pages in the magazine about classic ringtones and we discovered that a lot of people's parents, who saw the magazine lying around the house, bought them. People also change their ringtone depending on where they are. I'm a Celtic fan, so when I'm at a football match, I have a Celtic ringtone, but I live near the Ibrox stadium, so when I go home at night, I have to change it."

  The rise of the ringtone throws up some puzzling questions for the music industry.

  "One of the things we have to look at is why kids are perfectly happy to spend ?3.99 on a ringtone, but they think a similar amount is too much to pay for a single," says Gillespie. One theory is that ringtones are simply easier to buy.

  There is no need to go to a shop or access a Web site, simply send a text message and the cost is added to your phone bill. Another is that the onslaught of reality TV has devalued the singles chart in the eyes of its traditional target market.

  Certainly a ringtone reduces pop songs down to their barest essentials and in doing so sorts the wheat from the chaff. It gives short shrift to bland songwriting. Unless a song has an instantly recognisable melody, it won't work, which may explain why R&B and hip-hop, with their emphasis on sonic novelty and infectious hooklines, vastly outsell the work of Westlife or Gareth Gates in ringtone format. Gillepsie says ringtones are the millennial equivalent of dressing like a punk or a mod. They tap into the youthful desire to define yourself via the music you like.

  "Their popularity demonstrates that kids still care about music in a very definite way. They're taking the song they like and using it as a way of manifesting their identity. When a ringtone blares out on the bus or in the middle of a film, it says `I'm here, and this is what I like.' It's like wearing a badge with your favourite band's name on."

  Nevertheless, for anyone brought up on the old-fashioned notion of a single as a tangible object, something you buy, keep and pull out decades later, playing the B-side and poring over the sleeve in a fit of nostalgia, buying a new ringtone every fortnight is a difficult concept to grasp.

  It is fair to say that Wells has not lost much sleep worrying about whether the ever-increasing popularity of ringtones suggests that pop music has become an inherently transient medium.

  "The disposability of music?" he frowns, "I don't know about that. The issue is that there are consumers spending considerable volumes of cash on the products. If they're going to be spending more money on music, as opposed to spending small amounts of money and keeping the music for a long time? The more money they spend on music, the better."
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