Sure, you could buy a ring tone or use the cash to help, instead

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/12/2005 (7284 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I despise ring tones. There are few things in life that I find more completely unnecessary.

For those who aren’t aware, ring tones are downloadable jingles for your cell phone that replace the regular ringing sound a phone is supposed to make.

They can be anything from the Super Mario Brothers theme, to the latest Madonna single, to Darth Vader proclaiming that he is, in fact, your father.

The tones are downloaded directly onto your phone from any number of websites. They typically cost $1 to $3.

The majority of these ringers are poor quality polyphonic tones that only vaguely resemble the song they’re supposed to be. Now, if your phone has the capability, you can also get true music tones — the actual, original songs.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that the music is being played through a Fisher Price Baby’s First Radio-calibre speaker, and therefore, still sounds like garbage.

Compatibility problems are another issue. Quite often, a website will service your cell phone model (such as Nokia 6225 or Audiovox 9950) but not your carrier (MTS, Rogers), or vice versa.

So why does everybody want these things?

Allegedly, it’s because we all want to be an individual, personalize our gadgets and appear to be cool. But the reality is this: When your 50 Cent In da Club ring tone goes off in a crowded elevator, everybody rolls their eyes, and you come off with all the coolness of a junior-high principal addressing the entire student body with his fly down.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, the ring tone “industry” raked in a staggering $5 billion last year. That’s five — nine zeroes — billion dollars for ring tones.

On its website, UNICEF states that with just $15, it can feed three starving children for a full month. That means, if my math is up to snuff, with $5 billion, UNICEF could feed more than 8 million children for 10 years.

On the other hand, according to costofwar.com, $5 billion constitutes a measly two per cent of the total the United States has spent on the war in Iraq — so in that respect, the ring tone industry really needs to step up its game.

Further compounding my hatred of ring tones, record companies are getting clued in to the fact that ringers are one of the few growth areas in the music business these days. So they’re introducing new groups and songs through the format, specifically tailoring tunes to be released as or made into ring tones.

A prime example is Atlanta hip-hop group D4L and its single Laffy Taffy. Rather than pushing it to radio stations or clubs, the record label put the song out as a ring tone. This fall it was a No. 1 ring tone download. By the time the group’s full-length album was released in mid-November, Laffy Taffy was a Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and the video was getting serious airtime on both MTV and BET.

If you have yet to experience Laffy Taffy, let me save you the trouble: it is atrociously simple and barely qualifies as music. It’s almost worth hearing just so you can say to yourself, “Yup, that’s a ring tone all right!”

The point is this: Your cell phone comes equipped with a ringing sound. Probably several of them. Rather than downloading the latest Green Day or Kanye West tune for your phone (which you’ll more than likely be tired of within a month), why not use those couple of dollars for something with more purpose?

Especially now, during the holiday season.

Steve Adams is a freelance writer and an on-air personality for Hot 103 and QX 104. His cell phone makes a traditional ringing noise, and that is all.