Ringtones, or the auditory logic of globlization

First Monday

Volumn 10, Issue 12, 2005, Pages 1-62

  Gopinath, Sumanth ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

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EID: 31344460837     PISSN: 13960466     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (197)

1. See Alexander Weheliye. "'Feenin' : Posthuman Voices in Contemporary Black Popular Music," Social Text, volume 20, number 2 (Summer 2002), pp. 21-47;
2. and, Caroline Bassett, "How Many Movements?," In: Michael Bull and Les Back (editors). The Auditory Culture Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2003), pp. 343-355.
3. One significant exception is Heikki Uimonen's '"Sorry, Can't Hear You: I'm on a Train': Ringing Tones, Meanings and the Finnish Soundscape," Popular Music, volume 23, number 1 (January 2004), pp. 51-62.
4. Apparently the first among handset manufacturers to provide melodic rings, Nokia offered a list of newly composed and public domain melodies on their phones in 1996. The preset melodies did not, for the most part, differ from country to country -though there were exceptions such as "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," which appeared only in the u.s.
5. Subrahmanyam Karuturi, "What is SMS?," viewed online at www.funsms.net on 15 June 2004. In "SMS History," available at the same Web site, Karuturi notes that "Nokia had started its smart messaging protocol that was built on binary SMS rather than the standard text SMS. Nokia had expected this technology to be used for information services and over the air service profiling and it had languished for years, until suddenly in the year 2000, it found its application - ringtones that allow users to change the way their mobile phone rang."SMS is a protocol that was initially created in the late 1980s by GSM (originally Groupe Special Mobile, now Global System for Mobile telecommunications), the main mobile system protocol that accounts for about 80 percent of new wireless use worldwide. See "GSM captures 80% of digital mobile market," Scoop (27 January 2004), viewed online at http://www.scoop.co.nz/moson/stories/BU0401/S00115.htm on 1 September 2004.
6. Also see John Scourias, "A Brief Overview of GSM," viewed online at http://kbs.cs.tu.berlin.de/~jutta/gsm/js-intro.html on June 2004.
7. Vivienne Chow, "Tone of the Future," South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 27 September 2001, Feature, p. 2.
8. See "An Interview with James Winsoar," viewed online at htt://www.tonez.co.uk/news/interview_with_james_winsoar.htm on 6 May 2004.
9. See "Ringing the Changes," Economist, 17 April 2004, p. 62: "The dubious firms that currently dominate the ringtone business (many of which began life as providers of porn phone lines) may be squeezed out."
10. Hayden Porter notes that there are two main text formats for monophonic tones, Ring Tone Text Transfer Language (RTTTL) which was developed and used by Nokia, and iMelody, developed by the Infrared Data Association (iRDA) and adopted by Ericsson, Motorola, and Siemens. See Porter, "Phone It In!," Electronic Musician (February 2004), p. 77.
11. MIDI was developed in the early 1980s by synthesizer manufacturers (especially Japanese companies like Yamaha and Roland) in order to coordinate many different synthesizers in rock concerts. Despite its numerous limitations, MIDI become the standard protocol for the transfer of digital instructions to electronic musical instruments.
12. See Joseph Palenchar, "NPD Tracks Rising Adoption Rate of Highly Featured Cellphones," TWICE; This Week in Consumer Electronics (9 February 2004), p. 36. The NPD Group is a consumer tracking company based in Port Washington, N.Y. that has tabulated consumer information for business use since 1967 (see www.npd.com).
13. Steve McClure, '"Ring Tunes' Ready to Roar for Japanese," Billboard (13 March 2004).
14. Estimates for the global ringtone market in 2004 are around USS4 billion, as described in Scott Banerjee, "Who'll Drive the U.S. Ringtones Market?," Billboard (18 September 2004).
15. According to the Yankee Group, based in Boston, the global ringtone market in 2003 amounted to USS2.5 billion; the London-based ARC Group estimates that market at US $3.5 billion. See Laurie Flynn, "The Cellphone's Next Makeover: Affordable Jukebox on the Move," New York Times (2 August 2004);
16. and Scott Banerjee, "WMG Inks Mobileway Deal," Billboard (24 July 2004).
17. Scott Banerjee, "Ringtone Rumble Brewing," Billboard (22 May 2004).
18. The two major forms of music publishing royalties are mechanical and performance royalties. The former governs the mechanical reproduction of a particular musical composition (in the form of sheet music or recording), whereas the latter covers performances of such music (either scores or recordings) in public spaces.
19. "Ringing the Changes," p. 62.
20. For example, in the small but growing U.S. market, the dominant companies currently are Zingy, Moviso, and Modtones (see "Ringtone Rumble Brewing").
21. Jason Ankeny notes that "While the top-selling single in the U.S. during the last week of September, rapper Lil' Kim's 'Magic Stick' moved 7,000 retail units, Moviso sold 17,000 'Magic Stick' ringtones over the same period." In Jason Ankeny, "The New Sounds of Music: Ringtones, the Celestial Jukebox and the Mobilization of Media," Wireless Review (November 2003), pp. 30-31.
22. A succinct discussion of this phenomenon can be found in Dave Laing's "World Record Sales 1992-2002," as part of "The Music Industry, Technology and Utopia - An Exchange between Marcus Breen and Eamonn Forde, " Popular Music, volume 23, number 1 (January 2004), pp. 88-89. Laing's short piece includes a telling chart noting global record sales over a ten-year period: after peaking in 1996 at US$39.8 billion, sales have been on a steady decline, reaching USS31.0 billion in 2002.
23. Scott Banerjee, "Getting Their Cut," Billboard (22 May 2004).
24. Paul Sexton, "New Chart Calls Up U.K. Ringtone Sales," Billboard (5 June 2004), p. 44. Sexton notes that the "[financial and professional services firm KPMG will compile [the chart]," "London-based Official U.K. Charts Co. will market" it, and "David Simmons, CEO of music rights and publishing company Songseekers, conceived the chart last year. Simmons is also head of the MEF Ringtones Initiative. He says he has heard 'good noises of support' from Vodafone and other major network operators." Far from being unprecedented, however, this new chart merely codifies the informal "top ten" charts on many ringtone Web sites.
25. "Billboard Bows Ringtones Chart," Billboard (6 November 2004). Thanks to Hazel Carby for pointing out this recent development to me.
26. Uimonen, "'Sorry, Can't Hear Youl'" Uimonen's main argument concerns the idea that ringtones are actually music instead of noise, but the author also argues for a more nuanced version of the personalization thesis: "[r]inging tones offer alternative means to personalize one's phone. Personal and/or collective music tastes define the melodies that are selected" (p. 61).
27. "The New Sounds of Music."
28. A survey by Yankee Group revealed that 18 percent of mobile phone users are interested in ringtones. The greatest interest in ringtones is found in young adult (18-24) and teen (11-17) age groups, with 41 percent of the former and 22 percent of the latter downloading at least one ringtone per month. The NPD Group has claimed that teens between the ages of 13 and 17 have decreased spending on clothing by 10 percent in order to pay for electronics goods. See Sue Marek, "Raising the Bar on Ringtones," Wireless Week (15 May 2004), p. 25;
29. and, Yuki Noguchi, "Teens Ring Up Market Share," Washington Post (25 April 2004).
30. Oliver Burkeman, "Fellowship of the Rings," The Guardian (13 August 2003).
31. See Juliana Korantang, "Gold Rush is on in Mobile-Music Sector," Billboard (26 June 2004).
32. Juliana Korantang, "Gold Rush is on in Mobile-Music Sector," Billboard, Ibid.
33. Strategy Analytics, a research firm in Boston, estimates U.S. ringtone sales in 2003 at US$128.6 million. See Michel Marriott, "They Ring, Sing and Make Phone Companies a Bundle," New York Times (4 May 2004).
34. The growing Chinese consumer goods market is another potential site for ringtone sales, the significance of which I discuss below.
35. The oft-cited figures of USS3.5 billion global ringtone sales in 2003 and US$32.2 billion in music industry sales in the same year are mentioned in "Tingalingalingaling!" New York Times (18 January 2004).
36. Phil Hardy, "Music Executives are Guardedly Optimistic Despite the 7.6% Fall in Global Recorded Music Sales in 2003," Music & Copyright (28 April 2004).
37. Korantang, "Gold Rush."
38. "Technology Briefing Telecommunications: Stooge Sounds Invade Ring Tones," New York Times (11 August 2004).
39. "Ringtone Music Piracy Flourishes in Asia," Sify News (27 August 2003), viewed online at http://sify.com/news/internet/fullstory.php?id=13234789, on 18 August 2004.
40. Jason Ankeny presents the typical viewpoint in "The New Sounds of Music": "But most important, wireless network activity is carefully monitored and controlled by carriers, guaranteeing that while a library of rich media files created for download and distribution over mobile devices is not only possible but likely inevitable, it will never fall prey to the Napster and Kazaa online models whereby users exchange free, unlicensed and pirated content."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 http:www.dmeurope.com on 18 August 2004.
41. Alec Foege, "Going Gold? Maybe if Enough Cellphones Ring," New York Times (31 August 2003).
42. Scott Banerjee, "Xingtone Gains New Financing," Billboard (19 June 2004).
43. Zutaut's background is in the film industry; he began as an actor in B-movies and comedies like Back to School (1986),
44. Hardbodies 2 (1986),
45. and The Big Picture (1989).
46. 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 http://www.xingtone.com/press/index.html, 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.
47. 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 http://www.tonethis.com/index.php?page=news on 18 August 2004.
48. See Steven Patrick, "RIM Out to Eradicate 'Truetone' Piracy Disease," The Star (17 December 2004), viewed online at http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2004/12/17/technology/ 9693246&sec=technology on 5 January 2005.
49. 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 http://www.hispaniconline.com/trends/2004/aug/briefcase/dynamictrends.htm on 18 August 2004.
50. 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).
51. 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.
52. Ankeny, "The New Sounds of Music."
53. Sean discusses his support of for-pay online music in Hamish Mackintosh, "Talk Time: Jay Sean," The Guardian (12 August 2004), viewed online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0.3605.1280757.00.html on September 2004.
54. 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;
55. 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 http://www.kazaa.com.
56. Ankeny, "The New Sounds of Music."
57. See Patrick Burkart and Tom McCourt, "Infrastructure for the Celestial Jukebox," Popular Music, volume 23, number 3 (August 2004), pp. 349-350.
58. 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).
59. Brad Smith, "Multimedia Unplugged," Wireless Week, (15 May 2004).
60. 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).
61. Flynn, "The Cellphone's Next Makeover."
62. Joe Bant, "Music Downloads Sans PC," Wireless Week, (15 August 2004).
63. Smith, "Multimedia Unplugged."
64. "An Interview with James Winsoar," viewed online at http://www.tonez.co.uk/news/interview_with_james_winsoar.htm on 19 August 2004.
65. An Interview with James Winsoar, http://www.tonez.co.uk/news/interview_with_james_winsoar.htm, Ibid.
66. Andy Riga, "Job Has a Nice Ring to It," The Gazette (Montreal), 24 May 2003.
67. As discussed an interview with Keith Nowak in May 2004.
68. "Craze is a Key to Success," Express & Star (16 August 2003), viewed online at http://www.expressandstar.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archieve=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.
69. Listing viewed at http:/www.tonez.co.uk/jobs.htm 19 August 2004.
70. In Andrew Ross, Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor (New York: New Press, 2004), p. 198.
71. Emily Turrettini, "Behind the Ringtone Scene," Ringtonia.com (25 July 2003), viewed online at http://texually.org/ringtonia/archieves/001233.htm on 19 August 2004. Relatively little can be gleaned from the Web sites of Melodi Ltd. (now Melodi Media) and Soundonweb, respectively http://www.melodimedia.co.uk and http://www.soundonweb.com.
72. "GoFresh Launches Music Album as Ringtones," Moco News (26 April 2004), viewed online at http://www.moconews.net/archieves/2004_04_26.shtml#006906n 19 August 2004.
73. Emily Turrettini, "Original Ringtones by Marin Plante," Ringtonia.com (20 May 2003), viewed online at http://www.texually.org/ringtonia/archieves/000633 on 19 August 2004.
74. Jason Ankeny, "LeeOskar," Wireless Review (1 April 2002).
75. See "Deep Purple Plot Album," UltimateGuitar.com, posted 2 November 2004, viewed online at http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/deep_purple_plot_album. html?200411020414 on 19 November 2004.
76. 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).
77. 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).
78. 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.
79. 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 (http://sunday-in-the-park.com/bjrok/, viewed on 1 September 2004) includes a selection of one person's favorite remixes from the original remix Web site.
80. Viewed at http://www.indianchild.com/news_hindi_bollywood_ringtones.htm on 19 August 2004.
81. See "Ringtone Music Piracy Flourishes in Asia"
82. and "RIM Out to Eradicate 'Truetone' Piracy Disease."
83. Thanks to Nandini Deo and Madhura Gopinath for providing the translations of the film's and song's Hindi titles and lyrics.
84. Sudipto Dey, "Think Twice before you Remix Songs," Times of India (8 November 2003).
85. See Ad Crable, "Trashing Your Cell Phone," Lancaster New Era(15 April 2004) on recycling cell phones.
86. 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.
87. "What is the Most Annoying Mobile Phone Ring Tone You Have Heard?" MX (Melbourne, Australia), 16 November 2001.
88. 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).
89. 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.)
90. Burkeman, "Fellowship of the Rings."
91. Keith Nowak, spokesman for Nokia, recounted the dates and basic details of this history to me in a telephone interview in May 2004.
92. 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."
93. Uimonen, "'Sorry, Can't Hear You! '," p. 52.
94. 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.
95. See endnote 3.
96. 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.
97. 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).
98. 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).
99. 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.
100. Porter discusses the physical and technical limitations of the monophonic cell phone melody, as well as cell phone music generally, in "Phone it Inl" 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).
101. Quoted in Ankeny, "The New Sounds of Music."
102. th-Century Music, volume 4, number 2 (Fall 1980), pp. 147-156.
103. Brian Hyer, "Tonality," New Grove Dictionary of Music (Second edition), viewed http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/article.html?section=music.281021.1 on 21 August 2004.
104. 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.
105. 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.
106. 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.
107. 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.
108. Here, C4 is designated as middle C, B4 is the B above middle C, and C5 is the C one octave above middle C.
109. John Oswald, composer of sample-based works like Plunderphonics (1989)
110. and Flexure (1993), has written about timbre as the central musical commodity in popular music today and how it has superceded older, more easily copyrighted musical parameters like melody and harmony.
111. See his essay, "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative," presented at the Wired Society Electro-Acoustic Conference, Toronto 1985 viewed online at http://wwwplunderphonics.com/xhtml/xplunder.html on 2 September 2004. Oswald writes, "The precarious commodity in music today is no longer the tune. A fan can recognize a hit from a ten millisecond burst, faster than a Fairlight can whistle Dixie. Notes with their rhythm and pitch values are trivial components in the corporate harmonization of cacophony. Few pop musicians can read music with any facility. The Art of Noise, a studio based, mass market targeted recording firm, strings atonal arrays of timbres on the line of an ubiquitous beat. The Emulator fills the bill. Singers with original material aren't studying Bruce Springsteen's melodic contours, they're trying to sound just like him. And sonic impersonation is quite legal. While performing rights organizations continue to farm for proceeds for tunesters and poetricians, those who are shaping the way the buck says the music should be, rhythmatists, timbralists and mixologists under various monikers, have rarely been given compositional credit."
112. As Brad Zutaut noted to me, the history of video games is also being reproduced through the cell phone, with games like Snake repeating the technology of early video games like Pong. In this case, Zutaut believes that the games are capitalizing on nostalgia value for older video game formats.
113. Of course, the decline of Western classical music as part of the ringtone also signals the possibility of a greater non-Western presence (at least in principle) - sound files are able to capture many, if not all, of the nuances and cultural differences of world musics that the monophonic and even polyphonic ringtones cannot. One might therefore interpret the implicit "culture wars" initiated by ringtone-technological developments as a long-term battle between the West and the non-West, with the latter virtually guaranteed to win out over the former. But with Western and Western-derived popular styles dominating the sound file ringtone and with Western classical music having become "non-Westernized," as it were, it seems to me that this argument is less compelling than one that places the main conflict in terms of generational cohorts.
114. James Rampton, "The Sound of Peace-Making," Independent (London), 5 December 2003.
115. As discussed in a Weblog posting by Mia titled "When the Phone Dies, SO DOES SHE!!," at www.popupgadget.net, 16 August 2004, viewed online at http://www.popgadget.net/2004/08/when-phone-dies-so-does-she.html on 23 August 2004.
116. Among these include the representation of phone-surveillance in The Firm's "Phone Tap." See Weheliye, pp. 33-34. Writing sometime in 2002 (if not earlier), the author did not find ringtones appearing perse in the songs he examined. But he does note that in a song titled "Final Warning," by Ginuwine and Aaliyah on the album 100% Ginuwine (1999), a ringing cell phone is integrated into the complex rhythm track of the song. In that case, the electronic ringer sound reflects the song's references to phone numbers and cell phones (p. 33). Weheliye does note that "the ringing of the cell phone on this recording, however, is an exception rather than the rule" (p. 33).
117. The piece was premiered at Albert Hall on 25 July 2002 at the Proms; Andrew Motion wrote lyrics to the piece that were sung by a choir. Jack Malvern, "Mobile Drone" (26 July 2002) The Times (London).
118. "Orchestra Performs First Mobile Phone Symphony "Ananova, viewed online at http://www.ananova.com/entertainment_quirkly/story/sm_312997.html on 23 August 2004.
119. Two excellent Web sites that have provided many of the following references to ringtone works and concerts include Golan Levin's "An Informal Catalogue of Mobile Phone Performances, Installations and Artworks," viewed online at http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/related on 23 August 2004;
120. and, "Ringtone Concerts," Ringtonia.com, on 23 August 2004. Many thanks to Amanda Ciafone for referring me to Levin's Web site.
121. "Orchestra Incorporates Ringtones," Ananova, viewed online at http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_813801.html?menu=news.technology on 23 August 2004.
122. The gag in Schickele's works is that, as a musicologist, he continues to "discover" new works by a particularly untalented son of J.S. Bach (famous for his many talented composer-children, including C.P.E. Bach and J.C. Bach). Jeremy Eichler, "Music Review: A Trove of New-Found Gems Brings P.D.Q. Bach More Kudos," New York Times (30 December 2003).
123. See, for example, Sujata Sen, "Cyberklick: The Music of Ringtones: The Last Couple of Yeans Has Seen Extraordinary Progress in Telecommunications. Danish Birds Confirm That," The Statesman (India), 27 May 2001.
124. See the references to these works at Golan Levin's "An Informal Catalog,"
125. Indeed, a long history of attempts to break barriers between artists and artworks would have to extend at least as far back as the work of John Cage and Fluxus, then moving through the sound installations of the 1970s and beyond, which were direct precursors to the works described above. Crucial in this history is the development of interaction not only with other artists or performers but with technologies (like sound recordings, etc.). The Utopian aspirations of the neo-avant-garde, which at its height produced communities and artistic situations that were highly interactive, have since given way to more formulaic approaches to audience participation - and yet, the victory of that 1960s moment is that audiences do structure their own aesthetic experiences on a regular basis, even if they do so in uncomplicated and even trivial ways. The reproduction at present of audience-artist boundaries is not solely due to the capitulation of artists after the defeats of the long 1960s; part of the difficulty in producing highly interactive works is that a comparable interactive aesthetic was never fully internalized by participants, thus leading to the perception (and reality) that many interactive works are unsuccessful, being either too heterogeneous (too many voices) or to homogenous (one overarching voice). One ofworks in Levin's "Catalog" includes Gilles Perring's TheExchange (2001), an ongoing interactive project in which musical improvisers phone in their contributions to a collective improvisation. Such work is quite common with high-speed digital formats like DSL or cable-modem connections, etc. - but not with the low technology of the phone. The timbral limitations of the phone help to blend the different elements of the performance sonically, and the results are surprisingly effective.
126. Levin, "An Informal Catalog." A description of the project also appears at The Communication Museum homepage at http://www.museumsstiftung.de/stiftung/detail.asp?site=berlin&id= 644&kat=2001, viewed online on 23 August 2004.
127. "Die widersprüchliche Aspekte drahtloser Kommunikation," Levin, "An Informal Catalog." A description of the project also appears at The Communication Museum homepage at http://www.museumsstiftung.de/stiftung/detail.asp?site=berlin&id= 644&kat=2001, ibid.
128. "Music to his Ears," Bangkok Post (21 August 2001), viewed online at http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/press/bangkok/index.html on 23 August 2004. on Dialtones comes from Levin's own Web site at www.flong.com/telesymphony.
129. David Dayen and Joanna Lux, "Cellphone Symphony: In Composer's Hands, Annoying Ringtones Have Musical Potential," interview of Golan Levin with TechTV, 15 November 2001, viewed online at http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/press/techtv/index.htm on 23 August 2004.
130. Frank Sawatzki, "Dialtones (A Telesymphony): Interview with Scott Gibbons and Golan Levin," Receiver (October 2002), viewed online at http://www.reciever.vodafone.com/06/articles/index03.html on 24 August 2004.
131. This information and most of the foregoing facts were available at http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/, viewed on 24 August 2004.
132. See mentions of the recent phenomenon of cell phones being held up at rock concerts in Emily Turrettini, '"Ha, Ha' to 'Wish You Were Here': Why Cell Phones Have Killed the Concert Lighter," Ringtonia.com (29 July 2004), viewed online at http://www.texually.org/ringtonia/archieves/004752.htm on 24 August 2004
133. Themes of conflicts between nature and human society are common in postwar experimental tape music - one might hear such themes articulated implicitly in Edgard Varese's Poeme Electronique (1957-8) and explicitly in Ingram Marshall's Cortez (1973).
134. As quoted in Burkeman, "Fellowship of the Rings." The entire quotation of Plant's, from a study of cell phone use funded by Motorola, is illuminating: "The warbles, beeps and tunes of the mobile have become so common that their calls have begun to constitute a new kind of electronic birdsong, changing the soundtrack of the cities and altering the background noise in regions as varied as the forests of Finland and the deserts of Dubai. Many urban song birds have become adept at impersonating mobile tones and melodies... like a calling bird, a ringing phone demands a response. Public uses of the mobile spread this tension to all those within earshot, while leaving them powerless to intervene: only the person to whom the call is made is in a position to respond." With the sound file ringtone, such phenomena and perceptions seem likely to disappear.
135. See Ian Herbert, "Birdwatchers of the World Unite to Hear a Dawn Symphony," The Independence (U.K.), 1 May 2004, Viewed online at http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/enviornment/story.jsp?story=517055 on 6 May 2004
136. A rather fascinating series of discussions and criticisms of Levin's piece appear on Tom Moody's Weblog at http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/comment/19324/, viewed on 2 September 2004. At the site, Moody offers some trenchant criticisms of the piece and Levin responds with thoughtful comments.
137. Julian Stallabrass has written an excellent piece on Thomson and Craighead's work, addressing the ramifications of their online store, titled "Thomson & Craighead," Evening Standard (January 2003), viewed online at http://www.thomson-craighead.net/docs/juliaf.html on 2 September 2004. The artists' Web site http://www.thomson-craighead.net/ includes online works and useful resources.
138. See Perry Anderson, "Renewals,"New Left Review, volume 1 (January-February 2001), p. 20.
139. Sue Marek, "Artists Turn Phones into Canvas," Wireless Week (1 July 2004).
140. See Uimonen, pp. 54, 59.
141. See Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, translated by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), esp.pp. 3-12.
142. For a discussion of concert rage, see Alex Ross, "Concert Rage," New Yorker (26 March 2001).
143. A general discussion of the conceptual roots of the museum culture of classical music as found in the concept of Werktreue or faithfulness to the musical work can be found in Lydia Goehr's The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), esp. pp. 205-286. Goehr also mentions the composer Franz Liszt's idea for a real museum of musical works (pp. 205-206), which is perhaps the most extreme version of a museum-based ideal for such music.
144. See Catherine Greenman, "Download a Melody Directly to a Cell Phone," New York Times (27 April 2000).
145. See Andrew Gumbel, "Mobile Phone Users Join Smokers as Outcasts," The Independent (London), 27 April 2000.
146. Frankie Edozien, "Council Stems Cells," New York Post (13 February 2003).
147. See Fleur Anderson, "Ring Rage on the Rise," The Australian (30 December 2004), viewed online at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11809169%255E421, 00.html on 5 January 2005.
148. Sam Lubell, "Block That Ring Tone!" New York Times (8 April 2004).
149. These illegal uses include cheating at casinos, using cell phone cameras to glean information and articles at newsstands, and the arranging of drug deals by prisoners. With cell phone cameras becoming increasingly prevalent, locker rooms and bathrooms have become cell-phone free areas. See ibid
150. Chris Partridge, "When Manners Maketh the Mobile," The Times (London), 19 July 2001.
151. Lubell, "Block That Ring Tone!"
152. Theo Emery, "Survey: The Dreaded Cell Phone Tops List of Great Innovations Americans Hate," Associated Press Wire (20 January 2004).
153. Attempting to draw upon the tradition of American etiquette writing, Nevada Bell Wireless hired Peggy Post, great granddaughter of Emily Post, to write a wireless etiquette guide. See Felice Wilson, "To Beep or Not to Beep," Prague Post (16 August 2000).
154. Peggy Albright, "Etiquette Book Aims to Humor, Teach," Wireless Week (19 October 1998), viewed online at http://www.wirelessweek.com/article/CA4104?spacedesc=&stt=001 on 30 August 2004.
155. "India: Making Mobile Manners," Business Line (9 November 2000);
156. andChetan Krishnaswamy, "Now Learn Some Mobile' Manners," The Times of India (28 November 2000).
157. See, for example, the brief discussion of a pedestrian's death at the hands of a cell-phone talking driver in Gumbel, "Mobile Phone Users Join Smokers as Outcasts."
158. Shane Hegarty, "Can't Live With Them, Can't Live Without Them, " Irish Times (27 February 2004).
159. Burkeman, "Fellowship of the Rings."
160. Golan Levin discusses the difference between the warmer Siemens ringtones and harsher Nokia ringtones in Frank Sawatzky, "Dialtones (A Telesymphony): Interview with Scott Gibbons and Golan Levin," Receiver (October 2002), viewed online at http://www.reveiver.vodafone.com/06/article/index03.html on 30 August 2004.
161. Partridge, "When Manners Maketh the Mobile."
162. For example, note the following humorous contributions: "[October 9, 2003 10:06 AM] by madd scientist i would like to admit to the world that not unlike a pre-teen japanesse girl, i am addicted to ringtones. i began looking and sending to my phone an hour ago and i cant stop, i'm getting themes to such classics as knight rider and super mario bros, to more established songs such as wanksta, hitemup and live and let die. then i started getting WWF opening music for our Olympic her and stone cold, all of this is completely pointless and defers from my ideal phone that simply lets you talk to other people and know when they are trying to talk to you. i have been sucked in and now i want hello kitty panties and a neon backpack, argh." And "I have a problem Well since Rush Limbaugh has admitted to his addiction, I have to admit to mine....So here goes. I'M ADDICTED TO RINGTONES: It's a horrible disease, and it's gotten out of control. Last night I downloaded one of the songs from "Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eigth Dimension" as a ringtone. After I did it, I realized I had a problem. Not as big a problem as my obsession with sunglasses (I have seven pairs), but a far more perverse addiction. There, that feels better. October 28, 2003"
163. Uimonen describes this dual aspect of the device as constructing both offensive (directed outward) and defensive (directed inward) barriers against the prevailing soundscape, or social order as constituted through a sound world (p. 58).
164. Less represented in the above are discussions of how everyday consumers use their own ringtones for the goal of personalization. For one such treatment, see Uimonen, pp. 54-58, in which the author describes results from interviews with 19 sixteen-year-old Finnish ringtone consumers.
165. See Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 75.
166. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, 1981, Ibid., p. 17.
167. This formulation owes much to Michael Denning's reinterpretation of Jameson's framework, as explained in discussions as part of the Working Group in Marxism and Cultural Theory at Yale University. In Denning's conception, the Gramscian conjuncture is inserted as the middle framework in place of the less well-defined social tensions or class struggle in Jameson's original description. Also, one might argue that capitalism's transformations take place on a slow scale, much slower than that shifts in political power, and thus point to a real divergence in Marxist thought historically: the reading of history as a history of competing classes or class struggle, and history as a sequence of different modes of production. The theoretical articulations between the former and the latter, which operate at such different time scales, would thus need to be more sophisticated than reductionist viewpoints that, on the one hand, see class struggles as an epiphenomenon of production mode shifts or, on the other hand, understand mode of production shifts as primarily catalyzed by class conflicts or related social antagonisms. Thanks to Michael Denning for his comments on the two readings of Marxist history in a course on nineteenth-century Marxism and social movements in the Fall 2004 semester at Yale University, New Haven.
168. The interrelation of economics and politics is a complex one and is mystified at the outset of capitalism's historical treatment, which typically claims that a necessary requirement for the development of capitalism is its relative autonomy from politics. However true such a claim might be, debates about the relationships under capitalist modernity between political entities, such as nationnstates, and economic entities, such as corporations, are incredibly difficult to sort out. Consider, for example, the issue of national capitals: are nationnstates tied to sources of capital stemming largely from within their borders? The question is significant, for it determines whether economic competition can be understood in terms of geopolitical conflicts, as is done in much world-systems theory. In my inability to assess such concerns, I will largely refrain from fixing my analysis of the political and economic and prefer instead to find particular syntheses that appear to capture their interrelation in a given analytic situation.
169. As quoted in Eric Wolff, "It's Not Only Rock 'n' Roll, It's My Phone," New York Sun (26 April 2004).
170. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999 [1982]), p. 79 [B9. 1].
171. Benjamin also notes this cannibalizing aspect of fashion, remarking that "fashion takes its cue from everything" (p. 68 [B2a, 10]) when noting that early twentieth century dresses appeared with programs similar to those attached to the latest symphonic compositions.
172. See Brian Garrity and Carla Hay, "Wireless Deals Focus on Ring Tunes," Billboard (3 April 2004), in which Reidar Wasenius, a "senior project manager with Nokia's multimedia group," discusses the company's recent development of visual radio. Wasenius notes, "What we're bringing to the table with visual radio is impulse buying. You happen to hear something in a certain mood, and the radio station offers you the purchase opportunity. You do it there and then."
173. This formulation is drawn from Fredric Jameson's own discussion of these two polarities in his essay "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture," Social Text, volume 1 (1979), pp. 130-148.
174. I concur here with Jameson's comment that "we cannot fully do justice to the ideological function of [mass cultural works] unless we are willing to concede the presence within them of a more positive function as well: of what I will call, following the Frankfurt School, their Utopian or transcendent potential - that dimension of even the most degraded type of mass culture which remains implicitly, and no matter how faintly, negative and critical of the social order from which, as a product and a commodity, it springs" (ibid, p. 144). Indeed, it is in part this Utopian quality that makes these commodities worth purchasing in the first place.
175. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, p. 40.
176. See Russell Sanjek and David Sanjek, American Popular Music Business in the 20th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 16-19.
177. Russell Sanjek and David Sanjek, American Popular Music Business in the 20th Century, 1991, Ibid.,p. 63.
178. Burkart and McCourt, p. 349. The authors describe the legal expression of the "pay-per society" in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (p. 353) and refer to music service providers' goal of creating lucrative subscription-based services (pp. 356-357). The authors borrow the term "pay-per society" from Vincent Mosco's The Pay-Per Society: Computers and Communication in the Information Age: Essays in Critical Theory and Public Policy (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1989). Indeed, the "pay-per society" might be otherwise understood as a monopoly rentier society, which means that social conflicts and social movements would have to be oriented around issues of rent. For example, in referring to a possible backlash against such services, Burkart and McCourt describe the possibility of "rent strikes" by "tenants" of music service providers (p. 359).
179. See "Japanese Music Companies are Raided " Associated Press (26 August 2004), viewed at Yahoo ! News online at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040826/ap_en_bu/ japan_ringtones on 31 Ausust 2004.
180. Dan Sobo has mentioned to me that wireless providers are involved in a constant struggle to develop better encryption schemes, due to hackers' ability to detect breaks and flaws in existing schemes.
181. Some of this material is drawn from a summary for the report Ovum report "Billing for Content" by Eirwen Nichols and John Delaney, published by Ovum on 1 January 2004. A short summary of the report was found at the Ovum Web site (www.ovum.com), at http://store.ovum.com/detail.aspx?ID=725 as viewed on 3 September 2004. At least one article notes that firms like Ovum might be distorting the true picture of the mobile market in favor of promoting newer,
182. See Emily Turrettini, "Will Ringtones Lead to Mobilized Apps?" Ringtonia.com (28 July 2004), viewed online at http://www.textually.org/ringtonia/archives/004724.htm on 31 August 2004. 31 August 2004.
183. One should also note the possibility that excessive rentier control of profits can suffocate an industry - and record labels' attempts to squeeze independent mobile entertainment firms out of the ringtone market might be having such an effect on the industry. However, another possibility that seems unlikely at this point would be if wireless providers began to dominate the largest portion of the surplus value accrued by ringtone sales. In the latter case, wireless providers would, through rentier control, actually inhibit or even destroy the ringtone industry itself. Needless to say, the record industry is at pains to ensure that this will not take place, and since the resulting ruin of the ringtone industry would serve the economic interests of neither wireless firms nor the music industry, such a scenario seems unlikely at present.
184. On the radical origins of cable television, the movement to deregulate TV and the results of that deregulation, see David Joselit, "Tale of the Tape: David Joselit on Radical Software - Periodical of Media Criticism," Artforum (May 2002), pp. 152-155, 196, viewed online at http://www.findarticles.com/p/article/mi_m0268/is_9_40/ai_86647179 on 2 September 2004
185. . In an interview with Ian MacKaye, founder of Dischord Records and member of the bands Minor Threat and Fugazi, discusses his ideas on forming an independent label out of necessity, file sharing, and ideas about the music industry. Concerning the last of these, MacKaye discusses his belief that music cannot be owned, and that the music industry should not be claiming rights over its ownership. He states, "And that's the good news about music, it can't be stopped, it will always happen, people will always make music, and regardless of whether or not there's money to be made form it or not, it's still going to happen, it can't be stopped. So in my mind with the sales of records, the industry has done their best to claim ownership of music but they don't - they only own the things that they sell, so when people who are songwriters say, 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance." See "Interview: Ian MacKaye," Downhill Battle, viewed online at http://www.downhillbattle.org/interviews/ian_mackaye.php on 2 September 2004.
186. See Paul du Gay, et al., Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (London: Sage, 1997);
187. and Shuhei Hosokawa, "The Walkman Effect," Popular Music, volume 4 (1984), pp. 165-180. Denning's concept of "Sonyism" was drawn from a lecture in the course titled Formations of Modern American Culture, taught at Yale University, Spring 2004.
188. Quoted in du Gay, p. 129.
189. Attali describes the automobile as the cause of the first significant campaigns against urban noise and development of noise ordinances (pp. 123-124).
190. Thanks to Jessica Berson and Eric Drott for their comments on this. Drott has also mentioned the presence of a Japanese manga that deals with the subject of a boy and his robot, in which the robot is clearly treated like a pet.
191. As discussed in Hardy, "Music Licensing Revenues."
192. See David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 115-124.
193. The exceptions outside of the East Asian region would be niche markets that provide smatterings of the most prominent or lavishly produced Chinese films, novels, music, visual artworks, and the like. And despite their global popularity, kung-fu films - a preexisting Hong Kong-dominated cultural genre - really emerges in a moment prior to the appearance of broader mainland China's new trajectory.
194. For three fascinating pieces dealing with China, see Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, "China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle," Monthly Review, volume 56, number 3 (July-August 2004);
195. Arif Dirlik, "China's Critical Intelligentsia," New Left Review, issue 28 (July-August 2004), pp. 130-138;
196. and, Mike Davis, "Planet of Slums," New Left Review, issue 26 (January-Feburary 2004), pp. 5-34.
197. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett argue that "market socialism" has had disastrous consequences for the working class and poor in China, and Dirlik's review of Chaohua Wang's edited collection One China, Many Paths (2003) shows the tensions in the Chinese intellectuals' responses to the country's new capitalist developmentalism. Davis sees China as a quickly modernizing consumer society, to be contrasted with much of the rest of the disenfranchised world, in which poverty, informal economies, and growing global mass religions (radical Islam and Pentecostalism) predominate. Indeed, with the cultures and movements of anti-globalization emerging from Brazil and Latin America, the South American continent seems to be providing the political and cultural models for emancipation at present.