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Businesses Cellphones Communications Music The Almighty Buck IT Technology

Remember When You Called Someone and Heard a Song? (vice.com) 152

Posted by msmash from the blast-from-the-past dept.
An anonymous reader shares a Motherboard article: If you were youngish in the early 2000s, you probably remember this phenomenon -- calling a friend's cell phone, and instead of hearing the the standard ring, you heard a pop song. Called ringback tones, this digital music fad allowed cell phone owners to subject callers to their own musical preference. Ringback tones were incredibly trendy in the early and mid-2000's, but have since tapered off nearly to oblivion. Though almost nobody is buying ringbacks anymore, plenty of people still have them from back in the day. [...] In the process of writing this story, I heard from several people that they or someone they knew still had a ringback tone, in large part because they have had it for years, and don't know how to get rid of it.
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Remember When You Called Someone and Heard a Song? More

Remember When You Called Someone and Heard a Song?

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  • Um, no. Actually I don't (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:10PM (#54665713)
    I turned 42 in y2k. Had I called someone and got this bullshit I've have probably driven to their house and slapped them around asking "WTF asshole?".

    • Re: Um, no. Actually I don't (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And now you drive around in your electric scooter looking for more ice cream?

    • Re:Um, no. Actually I don't (Score:5, Interesting)

      by demonlapin ( 527802 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:43PM (#54665875) Homepage Journal
      It was really annoying, especially if you were on a per-minute-charge cell plan and used the old three-ring call as a calling card so you didn't have to pay for a phone call if they weren't there - it would still be on their caller ID so they would know you had called, just no message. Harder to judge timing.

      • if you were on a per-minute-charge cell plan and used the old three-ring call as a calling card so you didn't have to pay for a phone call if they weren't there - it would still be on their caller ID

        This doesn't change that. The "ringing" you hear normally is not the same ringing as is actually happening. And in this case you are simply hearing music instead of the simulated ringing. Nothing changes on the other end.

        • It does change it, though. How, exactly, do you count 3 "rings" when you don't hear "ring --- ring --- ring", but get "I would walk 5000 miles and I would walk 500 more just to be the man who walked 1000 miles to fall down at your door" instead?

          • ... "I would walk 5000 miles and I would walk 500 more just to be the man who walked 1000 miles to fall down at your door" ....

            No, you'd be the man who really really can't add.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Though now I'm wondering how you get this, because if I set up a ringback tone that sounded like a fax machine it'd probably finally put an end to the calls from that bitch susan from member services.

    • I turned 12 in Y2K, and I don't think it's OK to physically assault someone just because when you called them you heard music.

      Aren't us millenials supposed to be the immature, naive, sensitive snowflakes who are entitled? Maybe set a better example.

    • Re:Um, no. Actually I don't (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday June 22, 2017 @07:02AM (#54667201) Homepage Journal

      Ye of little imagination. People used to use a "sorry, this number has been disconnected" message, and then tell their friends to just ignore it. Got rid of most phone spam in the days before TrueCaller.

    • I still say this to my sister-in-law ... who is the only person I know who has this ... and continues to use (and sometimes update) it.

  • Worked in a call center... HATED this. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oic0 ( 1864384 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:16PM (#54665745)
    Not the salesman kind of call center, a disaster recovery kind of place. Had to call a lot of people back. Ringbacks were the bane of my existence. Right up there with the answering machine / voicemail sermons. People would go into an entire Bible study before the beep to let you record a message. Forced by my job to listen through it so I could leave a message. Arrrrrg.

  • Someone had a ringtone which played the song "It's Everyday Bro."

    Needless to say, I was silently plotting his death.

    • A ringtone you could hear when someone else called him, or a ringback tone you heard in place of the ringing when you called him? I only ask because ringback tones are a carrier feature and you only get to pick from a limited selection that the carrier has decided to offer; YouTube "stars" don't typically make that cut.

  • Some basics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Balthisar ( 649688 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:18PM (#54665759) Homepage

    First of all, a "ringback tone" isn't what you hear on an answering machine or voicemail; it's what you hear in lieu of the local signal for "the line is ringing." Apparently, according to the F.A., this was "a thing" in the early 2000s.

    Next of all, was it really "a thing"? I've been on cellular since 1996, and exclusively since 2002. I'd never heard of this thing until 2011, when I moved to China, where they're (apparently) all the rage. Call a number, and instead "ring, ring, ring", you hear someone's chosen song or other audio. Nifty. Irritating (am I on hold? Is there a switching problem?). Quite popular in China. Non-existent in the USA where Slashdot is based.

    In the USA, from 1996 until 2011, and from 2016 until now? I've literally never experienced a ringback tone, unless a thousand people are trolling me with country-representative ringback tones that are identical to the normal switched network.

    The F.A. seems to be US-based. WTF are they talking about?

    • It's real. I've heard them in the US. Typically popular music. Not real common, but not uncommon. Targeted at the older tail of millennials mostly.

    • Re:Some basics (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:47PM (#54665889) Homepage

      It was a bit of a thing in the US. Not so big that it's strange you didn't experience it, but it existed and it was a brief fad. I think it was more mid-2000s, but I'm mostly basing that on my memory of mobile media sales peaking around 2007.

      Anyway, they never became very mainstream because they were terrible. Even if the music was good and the cut was edited well, the nature of the product was that it had to be played over the cell phone network.

      If you don't know why that's such a problem, cell phone networks compress their audio in order to save bandwidth. The audio compression schemes they used were designed to use as little bandwidth as possible while still rendering speech understandable. Of all the frequencies you can hear, human speech generally only uses a subset. Of that subset of frequencies that human speech uses, there's an even smaller subset that are required to understand what a person is saying. So in order to save space, they'd strip out all the frequencies that aren't needed to understand speech, and then compress what was left.

      The big problem is, music uses a lot of those frequencies that aren't needed to understand speech. When you strip those frequencies out, the music usually ends up sounding like garbage. There was no way to make ringbacks sound good, so customer satisfaction was low.

      Actually, though, there are newer standards being used for cell phone audio that would allow ringbacks to sound much better now. I don't know if people even buy ringtones anymore, though.

    • >"Next of all, was it really "a thing"? I've been on cellular since 1996, and exclusively since 2002. I'd never heard of this thing until 2011"

      And I have been on cellular since at least 1996 (USA)... and I have not only never experienced it, I have never even heard of such a thing until *TODAY*... top that! I can't believe they would allow such non-standard and annoying crap!

      Learn something new every day...

      • Yup. Pretty much the same. I'm the UK though, so maybe that would explain why I have literally never heard of this until now.

    • Re:Some basics --- From someone who was there. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They are/were most certainly a real thing. I helped implement them back in the day when I worked for a large telecom. We were throwing tons of ideas out to try and keep the money flowing in after the telecom bubble popped in the early 2000's. At my old company we had dozens of people working on ringback tones as well as other more crazy ideas.

      Luckily one that I pitched at the time never got traction. I proposed instead of playing music as a ringback tone to play advertisements to whoever called you in o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mishehu ( 712452 )
      I'm not sure if the ISDN standards allowed user-defined ringback tones in early media, and those standards were initially defined circa 1988. Nowadays it's just 2 commands in a dialplan for me to set whatever I want, but it's usually something very annoying. :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      I remember them being advertised heavily in Australia around 2002, around the same time Crazy Frog ringtones were selling. I don't remember anyone ever actually paying for them though. Just not worth the money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by B1 ( 86803 )

      It was definitely a thing, in the sense that the technology existed in the U.S. It just never took off.

      I used to work for a company that built a Ringback Tone platform for carriers. I thought it was pretty nifty that you could change the ringback tone heard by people calling you, even if I never used the service myself. Thought it was usually used to play popular music, there are probably ways that businesses could have used it for marketing / etc.

      Alas, it was not a huge seller for us.

    • If you'd had any talk with young'uns back then, you'd of heard 'em aplenty.

      Now get off of your own lawn.

    • Apparently, according to the F.A., this was "a thing" in the early 2000s.

      Next of all, was it really "a thing"? I've been on cellular since 1996, and exclusively since 2002. I'd never heard of this thing until 2011, when I moved to China

      I'm was in my 20's in the 90's and early 00's, and not only being a tech head was an engineer at ISP's and telco's during this time. I've never heard of it until last week when I had to call a marketing company and got some shit song ring sound which I hung up on immediately. This article is the second time in my life I knew this existed. So yeah I don't think's it's as 'incredibly trendy' as the summary makes out.

    • Yeah, this matches my own experience. However, what I think would be much more interesting is if I could choose which ringtone the recipient would hear when I call. Oh, the possibilities.... Just imagine calling that manager you can't stand in the middle of a presentation from the mobile of another person you don't like. Some might call it childish, but I like to think of it as youthful.

    • Re:Some basics (Score:4, Interesting)

      by knwny ( 2940129 ) on Thursday June 22, 2017 @07:00AM (#54667191)
      It is still quite popular in India too though but it has been on s slight decline for the past 3-4 years. Telcos are still advertising this feature mostly through unsolicited, automated calls. They call you up, play a list of songs and ask you to press an appropriate number to set a song as your "ringback tone". The thing with this is that a large percentage of mobile users are senior citizens and such calls often confuse them to the point where they inadvertently end up pressing a random number on the phone. Voila! The "ringback tone" is set and the telco can start changing for this on the monthly bills. I have a feeling that this entire thing is intentional.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If you were on cellular in 1996, you are too old and that's why you never heard of it. I'm not as old as you must be, but I only heard it when my much younger brother got one.

      It's like that time I had to ask who Lady Gaga was. Apparently she was a big deal long before I had heard of her, which, no joke, was when someone complained about her music on Slashdot. I'm not even 40 yet.

      • Despite my advanced age and possible decrepitude, presumably I would have called someone who uses this service, right, and wondered what the hell was going on (as I did in China)?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          That's the point. It's novelty, if it makes you wonder what is happening the first couple of times then so much the better.

    • I've never encountered them anywhere but in China, either, but they seem insanely popular there.

    • A friend of mine has it on Verizon. I know it's VZ because when I call, it says something like please enjoy this music while the verizon customer is reached.

    • The worst part is that with high compression CoDecs (like G.729) that "music" will sound like garbage to the caller. Good luck with that.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I had a friend who had the Disney pack with their theme songs. My home line has piano jazz instead of the 4/2 rings (via VoIP provider's call queue feature). It reduces robocalls.

    • Agree with this guy. I fit the article's stated demographic of "youngish in the early 2000s" and I have also NEVER experienced a custom ringback tone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      I had ONE client do this with his personal cell phone, which is what I had to call from time to time to get ahold of him. When you called, it would connect almost immediately and say "please enjoy this music while we reach your party" and then his song would play.

      The crazy/stupid thing was his music choice was some kind of thrash metal which was almost not even discernible as music due to the limited frequency response of the phone. IMHO, pretty much all music would have sounded pretty bad, but this genre

  • Here's the background... (Score:5, Informative)

    by GerryGilmore ( 663905 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:27PM (#54665803)
    This started as a "Thing(TM)" in Japan and South Korea in the late 90s and early 2000's. Technically, it's called "color ringback" and - as opposed to custom answering machine setups, etc. - is implemented at the carrier level. As an earlier poster described, this is the sound that you would hear rather than the standard (in the US) 4/2 second ringtone you hear when you dial a number waiting for someone to answer. Working in the industry at the time, we started getting requests for it, so implemented it, but it never took off here in the US, so it dropped off in use to pretty much zero.

  • Grand Central used to have this before GV (Score:3)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:35PM (#54665845)

    Before Google bought it and began it's slow decline as a useful service, Grand Central offered this. I'm not sure it allowed a custom music file, but you could choose from a bunch of different ringing types including British, European, and Russian tones. Just for kicks I set mine to Russian.

    I think if they allowed this feature and custom wav files now I'd be tempted to make my ringing tone start with the SIT tone to through off the telemarketers (though does that trick actually work anymore?) and spam callers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mishehu ( 712452 )
      You can always run your own FreeSWITCH server and set whatever you want for your ringtone. That functionality has been around since the beginning of that project, which is at least 10 years old now. I don't remember but it's possible that Asterisk also allowed for this - I just haven't touched Asterisk since FreeSWITCH.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        I would like to replace GV entirely with my own solution, but I haven't found anything that works the same way for the same cost. GV offers completely free incoming calls as well as free forwarding to my phone numbers. No DID provider I know of offers this. I actually use GV as Grand Central originally was meant for: a modern call forwarding system to let me use one phone number and different cell phones and land lines.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mishehu ( 712452 )
          Yes, if you're holding out for free minutes, you're going to be waiting a long time. But at least in the USA DID market there's ITSP's that are very reasonably priced, especially if you're not burning through the minutes. (As somebody who works in this industry, I actually don't make or receive many calls because... well... I'm just sick of them. :-) )

  • I spent over $500 for ringback tones (Score:3)

    by hawguy ( 1600213 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:54PM (#54665911)

    I had my phone stolen once (well ok, it probably fell out of my pocket). I called it repeatedly hoping that whoever answered would return it. Each time I called, I heard a different ringback tone.

    By the time I called Verizon to report it stolen, they had racked up over $500 in ringback tones. It was less than 8 hours from the time I lost it until I reported it stolen, I have no idea how they ordered over 100 ringback tones in that short period, especially since it was an old-school flip phone, so they ordered them all through the tiny 4 line browser screen on the phone.

    Fortunately, Verizon refunded all of the purchases, and I had them lock out the account to prevent any future online purchases.

  • Remember when Slashdot had interesting stories?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hoofie ( 201045 )
      Yes once but they are getting fewer and fewer All of the non-US readers are going "I've never heard of this, it must be some weird US thing".

      Some of the Slashdot stories these days would be better off on Facebook click-bait links

  • Still available in 2017 (Score:4, Informative)

    by denbesten ( 63853 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @10:37PM (#54666057)
    Verizon [verizonwireless.com], ATT [att.com], Sprint [sprint.com] and T-Mobile [t-mobile.com] still offer them. Typical cost is $0.99 per month for the service plus $1.99 per year for each ringback tone.
    • A little while back my mother in law randomly got a ringback time on her phone. She has no clue how it got on there and no clue how to get it off. It's some classical music that she wouldn't have picked anyway. She is on Verizon
      • Now that you mention it I had a friend with vivaldi on his phone and he is definitively not a vivaldi person. Maybe they were trying to 'force' people to buy ringback tones?
        • Could be, Verizon is the main culprit in ringbacks these days, as can be testified by the fact that every time I hear one, it is preceded by "Please enjoy this Verizon ringback tone while your party is reached." I think that if you are paying for the service, a default classical music is used. (and its probably defaulted into most of their plans).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sims 2 ( 994794 )

            Now you know your friend is paying $1/mo extra for a service they aren't using because they CBA to login to their account online and remove it.
            go here: https://ebillpay.verizonwirele... [verizonwireless.com]
            go to "Manage Your Products" find "Ringback Tones" click "Remove From Account"

            Then go into Get Products > FREE PRODUCTS
            Find "Share Name ID" and add it to your line
            Then go to https://myvpostpay.verizonwire... [verizonwireless.com]

            Set name to custom "SLASHDOTWASHERE"
            Or if your feeling like a normal person you could put your actual name or busines

  • Who is still using a phone to make calls nowadays?

  • Financial reasons for ringback tones disappeared (Score:3)

    by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Thursday June 22, 2017 @12:12AM (#54666265)

    Financial reasons for ringback tones disappeared; that's why this thing has disappeared from our lives.

    The financial incentive was that the carrier was allowed to have it counted as a "call completion" at the start of the call, rather than at the time the call was actually picked up. Ot

    Now that we have "unlimited minutes", this no longer has financial value to the carriers; now it's actually a cost center.

    So carriers have quietly swept it under the rug of history; the equipment to do it is still there, and the music licenses still in place, but it actually costs them for you to use it, instead of paying off as $0.06-$0.12, which is about the amount of time an average person will let a phone ring before hanging up.

    By putting a song there, the idea was you would let it ring longer, in order to not hang up on the song, given that there was still the possibility of the person you were calling answering the phone.

    • Actually, no, it replaced the standard ringing and did not count as a call completion. What does count as a call completion is companies that have their PBX auto-answer and play hold music while they connect you.

      Also, it's a billed service; at $2.99/mo your phone could be ringing 24/7 and not cost them enough in royalties that they actually lose any money on the deal.

      And my 56 year old non-techy mother has one on Verizon, so I wouldn't say they've exactly swept them under the rug.

      • Actually no: it counts as a call completion.

        The normal "ringing" you hear used to be connected to the make/break on the POTS lines for the 80+V AC that was sent down to run the bell on the phone on the other end (via tip and ring lines), after the stepper relays put the circuit in place in the circuit switched network.

        Even if you have POTS lines, the current "ringing" you hear on the phone on the callers end is generated by the LATE line card; this is why instead of getting an immediate intercept as the fir

        • Huh, well, I'll have to call my mom, tell her I'm calling back to test something and NOT to answer, then call her back, let her ringback tone play for a second, and see if it shows up as a connected call on my bill.

          I don't pay for them, but I do see them. Your claim can and will be verified. If you're right, I'll see two calls on my bill.

          Your decision to include so many superfluous details, however, strikes me as an attempt at misdirection, so I'm guessing I'll only see one entry in my call log. Hell, I

  • It was a red flag back then (Score:4, Insightful)

    by schleimkeim ( 4962311 ) on Thursday June 22, 2017 @01:31AM (#54666397)
    All the people I knew that had a ringback song were assholes or criminals.

  • Called ringback tones (Score:3)

    by grep -v '.*' * ( 780312 ) on Thursday June 22, 2017 @02:40AM (#54666541)
    I worked at Alltel in the IT department when this was originally released. I hated the concept, but abhorred being forced to listen to them. Because it was (a) usually an annoying song NOT of my choosing and (b) in the phone earpiece it usually sounded just horrible.

    After a few days I informed my manager of a perfect lost sales opportunity: People actually pay us to play "their song" as a ringtone for everyone, right? I'll pay us even MORE to not EVER play them to me. She laughed and ignored me.

    I shouldda run it straight up to the CEO back then -- I coulda' been a contender! I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am

  • Yes. But how is this relevant? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday June 22, 2017 @02:49AM (#54666561)

    Let's be honest here, people: What is that story doing here? This isn't even a story. This is something you'd probably get asked by a buddy when you're sitting there on his porch, beer in the hand, it's too hot to think of a relevant subject and he's bothered by the awkward silence and the buzzing of flies around you that he tries to stir up some kind of conversation, hell, ANY topic will do, as long as you can at least talk about something.

    This is usually when you'd grunt something agreeing, take another sip from your beer and say something non-committing like "Yeah. Kinda remember. Sucked." or something like this, before the two of you return to quietly sipping your beer and one of you saying "Hell, let's go inside where the AC is, the heat's killing me".

  • I don't recall this ever being a thing here in the UK. Not sure if it wasn't possible here or if it just didn't catch on.

  • No. I do not remember this happening, ever.

    Anyone going to tell us where this "incredibly trendy phenomenon" occurred? Cos I've never heard of it.

  • I've always hated calling people that used ringback tones, because it seems that the type of people that use them are the type of people that like music I can't stand, so it is literally a case of "Here, listen to this song you hate while you wait for someone to answer."
    Plus, because you never call "yourself" so whoever picks out a ringback tone never actually gets to listen to it, so I can see why they fell out of favor quickly.
    Also, the sound quality over normal calls being so crap, it was like listeni
    • Indeed. Now, what I would have paid for is the ability to specify what I heard when calling others; bonus points if I could provide a custom WAV or MP3 and specify them on a per-number basis, as well as a "standard" for numbers I didn't specify one for.

      Think of the possibilities... If you have a gambling problem, you set your bookie's number to ring with "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, DUMBASS?!" In fact, you could do the same for your ex, or anyone else you probably shouldn't call but might be tempted to at some po

  • We don't hear ring-backs anymore because nobody calls anyone these days. We text, iMessage, etc...

  • a Motherboard article: [...] in large part because they have had it for years, and don't know how to get rid of it.

    Sounds like a "motherboard" user and/ or writer.

    I remember seeing that in my 4th or 5th phone's manual, and thinking "What the fuck is that for?"

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