I'm im US News & World Report magazine

vinsanity · 11-30-2004, 05:08 PM

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0...29cell.div.htm

A big hit to date has been ringtones, as cellphone users pay to get their mobile to sound off with favorite tunes whenever someone calls. These services are becoming so popular that Billboard magazine has just started a Top 10 chart for the most popular ringtones. (Last week's No. 1 was "My Boo" by Usher and Alicia Keys.) In Galveston, Newman pays $1 or $2 to download ringers from Verizon for his frequent callers--when it's his sister, who investigates paranormal phenomena, the phone sings out the X-Files theme. His generic ring for others is music from Monday Night Football , even if his beloved Dallas Cowboys are having a rough year. Newman, a medical researcher, says he likes the phone to reflect his tastes, so he's trying to find Irish folk music to load up. More typical is Vincent Trinh, a Houston college student whose phone was recently chiming out Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot" for callers he knew. Teens and young adults are the biggest customers, as they are for the music industry as a whole. Hip-hop--a genre whose digital noises and crisp beats often sound like some electronic alarm anyway--is their choice for ringers. Ringtone quality started at simple one-note-at-a-time melodies, progressed to more complex harmonies of different sounds, and now on some phones can reach radio-quality playback--playing out actual voices rather than digital beeps.

big shoutout and major props to the one and only

MOKDUDE

. thats HIS ringtone i'm talkin about there. your midi is now the most famous one on here and you're the board's new resident celeb MOK

i just wish Mr. Lagesse would've gave CPF a free plug but oh well

. i think this is an excuse to throw a thread party

. who wants to host?