Just how seriously do cellphone manufacturers take ringtones? Here’s a hint: Nokia hired a freaking orchestra to perform twenty-five new ones.
To be fair, there’s excellent reason for that: worldwide, ringtones make up a third of all digital music sales. More to the point, if you’re able to offer distinctive ringtones people remember, that’s a useful marketing tool. Love or hate the original Nokia ring, you’re never going to forget it, although we think it sounds better on violin.
Anyway, Nokia noticed something from a recent study.
Nokia said they decided to hire the orchestra after a study revealed that classical music ringtones were the second most popular. The pieces were composed by the mobile phone giant’s in-house ‘sound designers’ before being recorded with the 55 members of the orchestra.
The first most popular is probably the Black Eyed Peas, so thank God Nokia went with the second place. We will say this: As phone fidelity has improved, getting a classical music piece to not sound like crap has become substantially easier. And, honestly, a brief preview of the results are a lot more pleasant than you might think:
OK, that sounds pretty good. Now, can we mandate piercing sonic blasts into the ears of people who answer the phone at movie theaters?