Slide back in time, if you will, to the year 2007. Barack Obama was running for president. Rihanna's "Umbrella" ruled the charts. References from the film Ratatouille had slipped into everyday conversation. Placing a cellphone on a table was compared to marking one's territory. And musical ring tones resounded, marking their owners' identity in public spaces.
Little more than a decade later, these sonic signifiers are being increasingly silenced. Recording Industry Association of America sales data show that ring tones and ring backs peaked in 2007, when their sales reached $1.1 billion. Last year, these downloads only brought in $34.2 million, a 97 percent dive. The bright, gameresque soundscape of polyphonic tones gave way to clips of actual songs, but now both have fallen behind the iPhone's standard "marimba" ring.
And more often, just a buzz is heard.
The Emily Post Institute, in its advice on mobile phone etiquette, recommends that if a cell "must be on," then it really should make no sound. That's Annie Heckenberger's setting of choice.
There are exceptions. Such as when she's expecting a call. Or when she wants to watch a video on her phone. That has led to moments in meetings when everybody at the table gets to hear "Brass Monkey" by the Beastie Boys.
"It typically is an ice breaker," said Heckenberger, a vice president at the Digitas Health ad agency. While she declined to share her exact age, she acknowledged that her ring tone selection gives her away as someone in her 40s. At first, some colleagues seem startled to hear her signature song's bleating horns. But often there's laughter, she says, or "someone at the table will request to let it play."
Linwood Harris would prefer that his phone stand out in a crowded room. The 64-year-old used to have Al Pacino shouting "Say hello to my little friend!" the iconic salutation from Scarface on a loop as his ring tone, but he got tired of the screaming.
"When you have the right one, it's kind of soothing," the retired assistant principal said. Now, when someone's calling, it's to Sade's "Smooth Operator."
Kevin Wilson, a 36-year-old beer sales rep, sat down and made a spreadsheet for his ring tones around 10 years ago. He picked tunes for each of two dozen or so friends, basing his choices on titles with their names in them, or theme songs from shows they loved, or pieces that reminded him of them for some reason.
Things have changed. For his college friends, the Penn State fight song sounds. Most other folks get his default ring, which he changed this month to the theme song from Magnum P.I. He can't get enough of it -- even when he sees that it's a spam call coming in, "I just let it ring now because it's a song I like."
Those who cling to musical ring tones might be appreciative of not only their sound, but what they say about their chooser. In 2010, researchers at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands evaluated ring tones for the cultural power. Cellphones, they wrote, were a vessel for personal identity, from style choices on the hardware to the communication preferences of the user. A ring tone, they argued, could transmit shards of memory or reveal subculture.
Imar de Vries, one of the paper's co-authors, revisited the topic recently. "Media nostalgia is a common sentiment that can be discerned throughout media history," de Vries wrote. "And today also an important element in, again, identity branding." Musical ring tones, so it goes, are another means to announce who you are.
In ring tones, Heckenberger hears humor. "Other people I know have songs as ring tones, but I think it's more of like a punchline," she said, before sharing that she has "a friend whose ring tone is 'My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,' so it's kind of funny."
Style on 06/10/2018