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Motivated by a groundswell of demand and facilitated by the easy production of digitally–coded information, the commodification of the ringtone has progressed quickly in a series of stages or moments from the initial, functional ringtone to the tone as a digital sound file. Much more than simply an ancillary phenomenon — merely a part of the mobile phone — I would like to suggest here that ringtones are central to the contemporary sonic imaginary and are in several ways indicative of the transformations in capitalism taking place in the wake of the Third Industrial (or digital) Revolution. But although few have remained untouched by the dramatic rise of global, mobile–telephone–based auditory cultures during the last five to ten years, almost no scholars have as of yet deemed the ringtone worthy of serious investigation. Noted, cellular telephones are becoming a central feature in popular music and everyday sonic experience. Their unmistakable, ubiquitous presence is found on streets and sidewalks in offices and workplaces in buses, trains, subways, and cars in shops and malls in schools and public buildings in concert halls and performance spaces in parks and outdoor areas and in homes and places of residence - houses, apartments, condominiums, dormitories, trailers, hotels. Ringtones, or the specialized sounds used to alert mobile phone owners that someone is calling them, are liable to resound withinĮarshot in almost every conceivable modernized public and private space. The ringtone is also a remarkable cultural phenomenon that is demonstrating a high degree of popularity and is undergoing rapid transformation therefore, its short, continuing lifetime already needs to At its broadest, my assertion is that the development of the ringtone is a powerful lens through which we might clearly view some of the dynamics of present day (or “late”) capitalist cultural production, including the development of new rentier economies within oligopolistic sectors of production and consumption, and a long–term shift in global productive dominance from North America to the Pacific Rim. This essay attempts to provide a description of the global ringtone industry, to determine and assess the numerous cultural consequences of the ringtone’s appearance and development, and to situate the ringtone within the context of contemporary capitalism.

Ringtones, or the auditory logic of globalization