Perhaps a stronger threat to the profitability of the ringtone industry lies in the development of strategies and technologies by consumers and companies to create ringtones at inexpensive prices. Ringtone piracy by small companies and individual users, in the manner of MP3 files, is rampant worldwide, particularly in Asia — where music piracy in many forms is widespread [34]. In this case, ringtone Web sites are selling ringtones based on copyrighted material at low prices without paying licensing fees to music publishers or record labels. With the appearance of the sound file ringtone, the potential for free duplication of ringtones seems limitless, as it could easily follow the MP3 model of peer–to–peer distribution. Despite the much–vaunted ability of the cell phone to monitor and control individual transactions — which is not equally true of Internet activities — some software companies are creating products for combining peer–to–peer file sharing with ringtone creation [35]. Furthermore, even legal enterprises have produced technologies that threaten ringtone consumption. Xingtone, a company founded in early 2003 and based in Los Angeles, has produced a downloadable computer program that allows an individual to transform any sound file (from a CD or an MP3, for example) into a sound file ringtone. After a consumer pays the one–time fee of US$15 for the software, she can easily produce ringtones for her phone without any further cost. Brad Zutaut, the CEO and co–founder of the small company, has stated repeatedly (with the support of the Recording Industry Association of America) that the program falls under the domain of fair use in copyright law. Beginning his enterprise from the impulse of wanting to make ringtones that were not commercially available, Zutaut argues that ringtones, which are merely data transfers, should not be so expensive and that “ring tones are not going to save the music industry” [36]. The company seems to have been successful and has pioneered music promotion deals with record labels like Disney’s Hollywood records and the independent Artemis Records (whose band Sugarcult released a single from its album via ringtone in partnership with Xingtone). More recently, Xingtone has received financial support from Siemens to expand its operations [37]. Although Zutaut has stated that the company has a three– to five–year window, it is unclear whether Xingtone will be bought out by a major media or entertainment conglomerate — whose business interests might seem to conflict with those of the company [38]. Other companies such as ToneThis (also from LA) have followed Xingtone’s lead and are producing similar software packages [39]. Since the software in question has appeared recently and only affects sound file ringtones, it remains to be seen whether it, or pirated versions thereof, will have an impact on global ringtone sales or prices. It certainly is the case that piracy generally eats into ringtone sales — for example, an estimated 90 percent of ringtones in Malaysia are pirated — and the recording industry is attempting to forestall further declines in profits by eradicating what it refers to as a piracy “epidemic” [40].
We might interpret the visual, sonic, and technical references of Dialtones in three ways. First, the music in combination with the visual effects seems to evoke a kind of atomized connectedness associated with global digital communications. The phone–triggered LEDs and reflecting mirror activate the otherwise inactive grid, which resembles both an illuminated microchip and a time–lapse–filmed apartment building whose lights somewhat randomly go on and off during the night. At this level, the music seems to be about connectedness, communicating the notion that we as participants are part of a bigger global phenomenon around us — and the participants holding their cellphones up like lighters at rock concerts only underscores this sense [109]. Second, the sonic references seem to evoke a narrative pattern that switches between the “natural” sounds of birds and insects; “human” sounds of ringers, phone–dialing, drumming, and heavy machinery; and the “reflective” sounds of minimalist, minor–mode or modal ostinatos that provide an air of pseudo–profundity to the music. From this view, the music seems to be a high–frequency, video–game–like tone–painting of the history of human development and human society’s evolving relationship with the natural world — but evoked as a daydream triggered by a ringing phone. The work proceeds by portraying the intensifying conflicts between nature and human society, the potential catastrophes of which are hinted at, but never represented, towards the end of the piece [110]. Such a message recalls that of another minimalist masterpiece, Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass’s film Koyaanisqatsi (1982). Borrowing its title from a Hopi word meaning “life out of control,” the film’s time lapse images of nature and human society, taken and edited by Reggio, provide testimony for rampant global development and its untold ecological damage. The film image is perfectly juxtaposed with Glass’s repetitive score, which communicates profound stasis and monumentality at times and buzzing activity at others. Indeed, Dialtones might be viewed as a contemporary recomposition or re–imagination of that earlier work — but in this case, Glass’s medieval and Wagnerian minimalist grooves are replaced by loops of beeping timbres produced by cell phone ringtones and dialing tones, evoking video game tunes and electronic dance musics. And for the latter work’s historical moment — which was that of the monophonic ringtone — such a revisiting of the Glass/Reggio collaboration seems to have been particularly apt, given the way that cell phone ring–signals and monophonic ringtones have become almost “naturalized” in modernity. In writing corporate research reports overemphasizing the natural qualities of cell phones, cultural studies scholars like Sadie Plant have helped to make the cell phone seem like a natural phenomenon, arguing that ringing cell phones are a form of “electronic birdsong” [111]. And with the previously mentioned reports that birds have learned to imitate ringtones and that birdsongs are popular as ringtones, the actual conflicts between nature and capitalist technology are yet further mystified [112]. Third, the technical setup of the piece hints at a particularly ominous aspect of cellular technology. The fact that every person’s phone is pre–registered in a database, with many but not all phones being reprogrammed with new ringtones, paints an image of a society constantly under surveillance, with each individual citizen’s strings being pulled at will by a hegemonic force. And the apparent freedom of some to retain their ringtone (as personal statement) is contrasted with the fact that not all participants maintain the “integrity” of their original voices. With profitability and policing going hand in hand in mobile telephony, the piece’s intensification towards the end signals both the ever greater expansion of a society of surveillance and the paranoia that the awareness of such a society engenders.
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But media company TDK has produced a program called Fona Style that appears to combine file sharing and ringtone creation, seemingly on the model of Xingtone, and is now available in the U.K. See “TDK Fone Styla Lets Users Rip, Upload Content to Handsets for Free,” DMEurope (24 May 2004), viewed online at on 18 August 2004.36. Alec Foege, “Going Gold? Maybe if Enough Cellphones Ring,” New York Times (31 August 2003).37. Scott Banerjee, “Xingtone Gains New Financing,” Billboard (19 June 2004).38. Zutaut’s background is in the film industry; he began as an actor in B–movies and comedies like Back to School (1986), Hardbodies 2 (1986), and The Big Picture (1989). After leaving the film industry, he became involved in retail and eventually moved into mobile–related applications. Through his brother Tom Zutaut, a well–known record executive with Elektra and Geffen, he was able to make contacts with the music industry, eventually leading to his work with Hollywood Records and Artemis Records. More recently Zutaut has become involved in a documentary film project dealing with the CIA’s coup and removal of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, which was arranged in response to Arbenz’s modest land reforms that threatened the profits of the United Fruit Company. Despite the clear legality of Xingtone, Zutaut has been portrayed as somewhat of a maverick in the mobile entertainment industry and as having created a “Napster of the mobile.” (Cited from “Xingtone’s Ringtones Zing Labels,“ Online Reporter, 15 March 2003.) However, one facet of the Xingtone software that belies such a description is that it is designed to be used by only one computer and one phone, presumably owned by the same person. Further information on the company can be found at , a collection of news reports on Xingtone posted on the company’s homepage. Much of the information here derives from an interview with Zutaut in May 2004.39. The company seems to have been founded in late 2003, marketing itself as selling software for converting MP3 files to ringtones. See “ToneThis Loads MP3 onto Cellphone,” viewed online at =news on 18 August 2004.40. See Steven Patrick, “RIM Out to Eradicate ‘Truetone’ Piracy Disease,” The Star (17 December 2004), viewed online at -techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2004/12/17/technology/9693246&sec=technology on 5 January 2005.41. See Weheliye, pp. 33–34. At least one Web site charting Latino/a trends notes that 29 percent download ringtones, as opposed to nine percent of the general U.S. population. Information viewed online at on 18 August 2004.42. Figures and information on global ringtone use are drawn primarily from Phil Hardy’s “Music Licensing Revenues on the Increase Driven by the Fast–Growing $3bn plus Mobile Music Market,” Music & Copyright (12 May 2004). One remarkable essay describing the political aspects of text messaging cultures in the Philippines is Vincente Rafael’s “The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the Contemporary Philippines,” Public Culture, volume 15, number 3 (Fall 2003), pp. 399–425.43. Ankeny, “The New Sounds of Music.”44. Sean discusses his support of for–pay online music in Hamish Mackintosh, “Talk Time: Jay Sean,” The Guardian (12 August 2004), viewed online at ,3605,1280757,00.html on 1 September 2004. Lessig’s ideal would be to provide faster and better for–pay online music services that would compete sufficiently well with free access so that file sharing would not have to be criminalized. See Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 296–304; thanks to Michael Denning for this reference. Kazaa itself seems to adopt a similar perspective by promoting legal, licensed content available through the Web site while still defending its facilitation of free file sharing. See Ankeny, “The New Sounds of Music.”46. See Patrick Burkart and Tom McCourt, “Infrastructure for the Celestial Jukebox,” Popular Music, volume 23, number 3 (August 2004), pp. 349–350. The authors argue that the term first appeared in Paul Goldstein’s book Copyright’s Highway (1994), in which a broad, pay–per–transaction Gesamtapparat was imagined (p. 349).47. Brad Smith, “Multimedia Unplugged,” Wireless Week, (15 May 2004). More recently, Nokia has decided to withdraw from marketing a TV phone for the time being, despite the company’s recent demonstration of the technology in Singapore. The company argues that the problems lie less in the technology and infrastructure and more in constructing a business model for connecting the TV phone to the media/TV industry and the wireless world. See Brad Smith, “Nokia Cans TV Phone but not TV Plans,” Wireless Week, (15 July 2004).48. Flynn, “The Cellphone’s Next Makeover.”49. Joe Bant, “Music Downloads Sans PC,” Wireless Week, (15 August 2004).50. Smith, “Multimedia Unplugged.”51. “An Interview with James Winsoar,” viewed online at _with_james_winsoar.htm on 19 August 2004.52. Ibid.53. Andy Riga, “Job Has a Nice Ring to It,” The Gazette (Montreal), 24 May 2003.54. As discussed an interview with Keith Nowak in May 2004.55. “Craze is a Key to Success,” Express & Star (16 August 2003), viewed online at -bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=18&num=39626 on 19 August 2004. Also, I should note that my characterization of other companies following Winsoar’s business model of creating ringtone provider companies is a generalization that assumes the priority of Winsoar’s company in the business. Whether or not Winsoar actually created the first ringtone company in the U.K. or even the world (and it is not clear to me that another company did not hit upon the idea independently around the same time or even beforehand), my characterization does not necessarily assume the direct influence of Winsoar on these other companies. Instead, Winsoar appears here as a figure for a certain kind of enterprise, a small, independently owned and managed ringtone and mobile entertainment provider.56. Listing viewed at on 19 August 2004.57. In Andrew Ross, Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor (New York: New Press, 2004), p. 198.58. Emily Turrettini, “Behind the Ringtone Scene,” Ringtonia.com (25 July 2003), viewed online at on 19 August 2004. Relatively little can be gleaned from the Web sites of Melodi Ltd. (now Melodi Media) and Soundonweb, respectively and “GoFresh Launches Music Album as Ringtones,” Moco News (26 April 2004), viewed online at _04_26.shtml#006906 on 19 August 2004.60. Emily Turrettini, “Original Ringtones by Marin Plante,” Ringtonia.com (20 May 2003), viewed online at on 19 August 2004.61. Jason Ankeny, “Lee Oskar,” Wireless Review (1 April 2002).62. See “Deep Purple Plot Album,” UltimateGuitar.com, posted 2 November 2004, viewed online at -guitar.com/news/general_music_news/deep_purple_plot_album.html?200411020414 on 19 November 2004.63. It is worth noting that hip-hop artists like the Wu–Tang Clan and Mobb Deep have been promoting their music via ringtones at least as early as 2001. The mobile entertainment firm Zingy promoted the artists’ 2001 albums by releasing ringtones of album tracks in advance of the albums’ release dates. See Benny Evangelista, “Ring Tones Raise a Buzz,” San Francisco Chronicle (7 December 2001).64. Jeff Leeds, “The Guy from Green Day Says He Has Your Mother on the Cellphone,” New York Times (18 August 2004). Leeds also notes that promotion through ringtones is fast becoming the norm for artists and that many artists have agreed to sell their music as ringtones after having resisted doing so (like U2).65. In addition to mirroring the widening gulf between most corporate employees and upper–level executives, this pattern is also reminiscent of the academic labor market, in which “star” academics are courted by prestigious institutions while casual laborers supply most of the teaching and research labor power. On the academic star system, see Jonathan VanAntewerpen and David L. Kirp, “Star Wars: New York University,” In: David Kirp (editor). Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 66–89.66. See the discussion, for example, of a remarkable, but now defunct, Web site for posting remixes of songs by Bjork (www.arktikos.com) in Matthew Mirapaul, “Arts Online: Why Just Listen to Pop When You Can Mix Your Own?” New York Times (20 August 2001). Another Web site ( -in-the-park.com/bjork/, viewed on 1 September 2004) includes a selection of one person’s favorite remixes from the original remix Web site.67. Viewed at _hindi_bollywood_ringtones.htm on 19 August 2004.68. See “Ringtone Music Piracy Flourishes in Asia” and “RIM Out to Eradicate ‘Truetone’ Piracy Disease.”69. Thanks to Nandini Deo and Madhura Gopinath for providing the translations of the film’s and song’s Hindi titles and lyrics.70. Sudipto Dey, “Think Twice before you Remix Songs,” Times of India (8 November 2003).71. See Ad Crable, “Trashing Your Cell Phone,” Lancaster New Era (15 April 2004) on recycling cell phones. The author also notes that a recent FCC ruling, allowing phone number transferring between different cell phones and from land lines to cell phones, requires the purchase of a new phone — resulting in guaranteed profits for handset manufacturers and further creation of electronics waste. For a remarkably multilayered treatment of e–waste, see Andrew Ross, “The Flight of Silicon Wafers,” in his Low Pay, High Profile, pp. 157–173.72. “What is the Most Annoying Mobile Phone Ring Tone You Have Heard?” MX (Melbourne, Australia), 16 November 2001.73. In basic music theoretical terms, the two phrases constitute a period, or an antecedent and consequent phrase (two musical phrases that have something like a question–answer relationship). The first phrase ends without the tonic note in the melody, thus closing with an imperfect authentic cadence, and the second phrase responds to this relatively inconclusive phrase ending by starting the same music again and finishing with the tonic note and tonic harmony (or a perfect authentic cadence).74. Thanks to Steven Rings for the information on the advertisements, which he watched while in Europe in 1995. Rings has also mentioned to me that several classical guitarists might be employed as ringtone composers and arrangers, given the obscurity of the Tarrega piece. Rings noted that he had heard a ringtone arrangement of a melody from Mozart’s The Magic Flute that was clearly taken not from the original work but from a blander arrangement of the tune by the early 19th century Spanish guitar composer Fernando Sor. (This arrangement was part of the latter’s Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart from “The Magic Flute”, op. 9.)75. Burkeman, “Fellowship of the Rings.”76. Keith Nowak, spokesman for Nokia, recounted the dates and basic details of this history to me in a telephone interview in May 2004.77. For example, Andy Riga, in “Job Has a Nice Ring to It,” states, “Cell phones come with a standard ring tone, plus a few alternatives, usually bits of music no longer protected by copyright, such as fragments from Bolero or Carmen.”78. Uimonen, “‘Sorry, Can’t Hear You!’,” p. 52. Gavin Naden, “Real Life: What Your Ring Tone Says about You,” Sunday Mirror (13 May 2001). The psychiatrist interviewed for the article was named Dr. Glenn Wilson.79. See endnote 3.80. One might argue, however, that with the appearance of the downloadable ringtone, such changes weren’t necessary, but it did take at least a year or two between the first appearance of the ringtone and a ringtone format that was uploadable.81. Uimonen, drawing on the work of T. Kopomaa, argues that from 1990-1995 cell phones were mass–marketed, and then since 1995 should be best understood as diversified mass market products (pp. 52–53).82. An excellent discussion of the impact of Western music on the rest of the world is found in Bruno Nettl, The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival (New York: Schirmer, 1985). Another version of the globalization of classical music would be its corporate mass–culturization and resulting control by global music conglomerates, as found in Norman Lebrecht, Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers, and Corporate Politics (Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub. Group, 1997), esp. pp. 394–414.83. Porter discusses the physical and technical limitations of the monophonic cell phone melody, as well as cell phone music generally, in “Phone it In!” Matthew Mirapaul also mentions the three–octave ranges of early cell phones in “Composer Plans to Strike Up the Cell Phones,” New York Times (16 August 2001).84. Quoted in Ankeny, “The New Sounds of Music.”85. A musicological treatment of organicism can be found in Ruth Solie’s “The Living Work: Organicism and Musical Analysis,” 19th–Century Music, volume 4, number 2 (Fall 1980), pp. 147–156.86. Brian Hyer, “Tonality,” New Grove Dictionary of Music (Second edition), viewed online at =music.28102.1 on 21 August 2004.87. Schenker makes this point in a highly civilizationalist way, arguing that Western music before tonality was extremely primitive, in Harmony, Oswald Jonas (editor), Elisabeth Mann Borgese (translator) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954 [1906]), pp. 134–137. Schenker is a fascinating and contradictory figure. Almost a modernist as a scholar and an arch–conservative in his musical tastes and politics, perhaps his contradictions are best encapsulated in his status, towards the end of his life, as a Jew attracted to aspects of Nazi ideology. An early piece on Schenker that situates him in relation to early structuralist thinkers is Charles Rosen’s, “Concealed Structures: Heinrich Schenker, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobsen” (originally a book review in 1971), in his book Romantic Poets, Critics, and Other Madmen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 182–211. Thanks to Roman Ivanovitch for this reference. For a lucid and insightful discussion of Schenker’s political views, see Andrea Reiter, “‘Von der Sendung des deutschen Genies’: The Music Theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) and Cultural Conservatism,” In: Rüdiger Görner (editor). Resounding Concerns (Munich: Iudicium, 2003), pp. 135–159.88. See Leonard Meyer, “The Perception and Cognition of Complex Music,” in his book Music, The Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth–Century Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 266–293, esp. pp. 283–293. Meyer doesn’t use the term “tonal music” and only discusses the music of composers like Bach or Wagner as instances of such redundant music that allows for musical communication. Meyer’s main purpose in the essay is to argue that total serial music is a style of music that does not include such redundancy and is therefore very difficult, or even impossible, to understand perceptually. Thanks to Eric Drott for this reference.89. Here, C4 is designated as middle C, B4 is the B above middle C, and C5 is the C one octave above middle C. 2ff7e9595c
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