Top 10 Ringtones of All Time
01. 50 Cent Featuring Olivia "Candy Shop" Total Sales: 2.4 million
02. T-Pain (feat. Yung Joc) "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')" Total Sales: 2.3 million
03. Koji Kondo "Super Mario Brothers Theme" Total Sales 2.3 million
04. Snoop Dogg Feat. Pharrell "Drop It Like It's Hot" Total Sales: 2.2 million
05. Mims "This is Why I'm Hot" Total Sales: 2.1 million
06. Jim Jones "We Fly High" Total Sales: 1.8 million
07. Beyoncé "Irreplaceable" Total Sales: 1.7 million
08. Shop Boyz "Party Like a Rockstar" Total Sales: 1,732,000
09. Soulja Boy "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" Total Sales: 1,609,000
10. Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz Feat. Usher & Ludacris "Lovers And Friends" Total Sales: 1.5 million
Top 10 Ringtones of 2007
01. T-Pain (feat. Yung Joc) "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')" Total Sales: 2,279,000
02. Mims "This is Why I'm Hot" Total Sales: 2,088,000
03. Shop Boyz "Party Like a Rockstar" Total Sales: 1,732,000
04. Soulja Boy "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" Total Sales: 1,609,000
05. Akon "Don't Matter" Total Sales: 1,471,000
06. Huey "Pop, Lock & Drop It" Total Sales: 1,398,000
07. Sean Kingston "Beautiful Girls" Total Sales: 1,379,000
08. Hurricane Chris "A Bay Bay" Total Sales: 1,376,000
09. R. Kelly feat. T-Pain & T.I. "I'm a Flirt" Total Sales: 1,147,000
10. Nickelback "Rockstar" Total Sales: 1,126,000
Top 5 Most Annoying Ringtones
5. Mario Brothers theme
Gamers everywhere flew their geek flag high with the ringtone based on the original score for the Mario Brothers videogame. For those not in on the joke, It became an almost secret handshake among the digerati. For those not in on the joke, however, many it was just another chirpy, irking electronic melody.
4. "Halloween" Theme Song
In the early days of polyphonic ringtones, few actual songs sounded very good as synthesized cover tunes of otherwise acceptable songs. This lent easy pickings to the simply, yet instantly recognizable high note sequence of the Halloween movies. Like most theme songs, however, it gets tiresome fast.
3. The Default Nokia Ring
Chances are you have, at some time in your life, been the victim of phantom ring syndrome caused by hearing the 13-tone default Nokia ring in a crowded room. The maddening tone blooms from somewhere, and everyone present is suddenly groping to answer their phone. Even more annoying, often it's not even a real call but the mobile phone of someone on a TV nearby. Apparently, the networks are as fond of Nokia's default as they used to be of giving characters 555-5555 as a phone number.
2. The Mosquito
UK inventor Howard Stapleton created a device that emitted a mosquito-sounding buzz at frequencies only teens can hear, which he intended to be used to deter teen loiterers from local malls. Instead, it was developed into a ringtone that teens could assign to their phones so their teachers and parents couldn¹t tell when their phone was ringing.
1. Crazy Frog
Otherwise known as "The Annoying Thing," the Crazy Frog ringtone which sounds like an impish critter shout-stuttering his impression of a ringing phone -- turned into a media darling when it became the best-selling ringtone of all time in Europe. It was later remade into a full-song single, which ultimately knocked Coldplay from the top of the European singles charts, and quickly fell to obscurity a la the pet rock.
Retrospective
1995, Birth of Monophonics. From Nokia, the first monophonic ringtone emerges: a 13-note rendering of Francisco Tarrega's "Gran Vals." It was available in Nokia phones only (hardcoded, not downloadable) and became the Nokia "audio brand" over time.
1997. Nokia ships multiple phones with a customized ringtone application that let users compose their own ringtones on the phone. It never caught on.
1998. Finnish programmer Vesa-Matti Paananen uses Nokia's texting capability to write Harmonium, allowing users to program harmony and rhythm music into their rings, and which they can send to friends via the phone itself.
Paananen posts Harmonium online for free and it is soon adopted by companies all over the world.
2000. YourMobile.com launches. The company buys experimental music licenses from publishers for a penny a song and makes monophonic ringtones available from it's website for free. Tones were delivered via SMS and worked on GSM phones only. The initial catalog was 2,000 songs and the site logged 20,000 downloads a day. The first ringtone acquired is hard to determine, but early bestsellers included "American Woman," disco hit "Better Off Alone" and the themes to the James Bond and Pink Panther movies.
Latter in the year, YourMobile.com opens an Australian service and is sued by EMI Music Publishing. Suit settled in days for $150,000. The lawsuit resulted in a massive amount of press coverage, which sparked consumer demand and ultimately crashed YourMobile's servers.
2001. Wireless operator PacBell, which later becomes Cingular, taps YourMobile to create its downloadable ringtone store. Six months later, T-Mobile does the same. The ringtones offered are all monophonic and delivered via SMS.
In May, Korea's Witcom launches Color Ring Back Tone, the first personalized ringback tone service.
2002. Polyphonic Spree. Nokia introduces the 3510, first phone capable of using polyphonic ringtones, which play four to 16 notes simultaneously. Nokia eventually expands the technology to 500 million phones worldwide. The polyphonic market is born.
With the switch to polyphonic ringtones comes a spike in the popularity of directly downloading ringtones to the phone. Verizon, Sprint and other operators join the race. Ringtone sales jump from $10 million to $93 million.
2003, Master Tones Ring in Real Music. Master ringtones, which feature an actual clip of the master recording rather than the synthesizer cover version, are introduced. Worldwide ringtones sales reach $3.5 billion.
2004, Ringtones on the Charts. In November, Billboard bows the Hot Ringers chart, tracking the United States' top 20 best selling polyphonic ringtones every week. The first No. 1 ringtone was "My Boo" by Usher and Alicia Keys, (which was also the No. 1 song on The Billboard Hot 100.)
Ringtones Go Platinum. 50 Cent's "In Da Club" is the first non-monophonic ringtone to sell 1 million units. The news is covered widely, including on CNN. The song goes on to beat out Jay-Z and Outkast to win Billboard's first Ringtone of the Year award at the Dec. 8, 2004 Billboard Music Awards. 50 Cent goes on to win the award again in 2005 for "Candy Shop." (pictured)
The "Crazy Frog" ringtone becomes a massive hit in Europe via the Jamster subscription service. Ringtones pull in $4 billion worldwide, with $300 million from the U.S. alone.
2005. The first generation of cell phones that allow owners to download MP3s -- and therefore create their own master ringtones become available.
Coldplay becomes the first band to release the ringtone version of a song before the full version is available in stores or even radio. (pictured)
The "Crazy Frog" ringtone is recreated as a single, dubbed "Axel F," and it subsequently knocks Coldplay from the top of the Europeans singles charts.
Hip-hop producer Timbaland creates an entire album of custom ringtones, in conjunction with MTV and Virgin Mobile..
Master Tones Get Certified. The RIAA unveils its Gold and Platinum Master Ringtone Certification program, with 84 titles. Ringtones rise to $4.4 billion worldwide in 2005.
2006, Mastertones Get Charted. In December, Billboard introduces the Hot Ringmasters chart, which tracks the top selling master ringtones in the U.S. The first Hot Ringmasters No. 1 belongs to "Smack That," by Akon feat. Eminem. (pictured) At this time, an estimated 76% of ringtones sold are master ringtones.
According to one estimate, global ringtone sales jumped to $6.6 billion, up a whopping $2.2 billion.
2007. T-Pain appears on three of the year's ten best-selling ringtones, including No. 1.
Source: Billboard magazine.
