A History of Ringtone file format technology

Over the last 10 years ringtones have evolved from tinny, barely recognisable, quasi-musical renditions to full stereo tracks, exactly the same as heard on the radio or a CD.  This transformation has been under-pinned by a shift in ringtone format technology in four key phases of development.  This rapid evolution of these formats has been enabled by the fact that the typical person changes their phone every two years. 

The very first generation of ringtones are known as “monophonic” ringtones as they could only support playback of one note as a time.  The sounds these types of ringtones could make were also very limited, typically only allowing a single tone to be played at varying pitches.  The typical format for monophonic ringtones was RTTTL, which was compatible with Nokia handsets, and could code the information to create the ringtone in a text file.  This text file could be sent over-the-air (OTA) to a mobile handset, using the Nokia Smart Messaging standard, embedding the ringtone in a single SMS.  Alternatively, users could create their own ringtones using a “keypress editor” which could create the ringtone file on the device itself.  Other manufacturers developed their own formats as this stage including eMelody and imelody for by Ericsson, and MOT, a ringtone format used by some of the early Motorola phones.

Polyphonic ringtones, first emerged in Japan around 2001 and allowed several types of notes and instruments to be played at one time.  The first polyphonic ringtones used sequenced recording methods such as MIDI.  Such recordings specify what instrument should play a note at a given time, but the actual instrument sound is dependent upon the playback device.  SP-Midi, a specific format for ringtones, eventually emerged as a standard, with different levels of polyphony – for example, 4-note, 16-note and 32-note.  Again, there were some other formats that emerged alongside SP-Midi, including SMAF (also known as .mmf) – a Yamaha-supported music format that combines MIDI with instrument sound data.  Polyphonic ringtones lead for a boom in the industry as the sound became much richer and more attractive to customers, but only required publishing royalties to be paid as the original track recording was not used.  

The third generation of ringtone formats first appeared fairly quickly after polyphonic ringtones had become established in Western markets.  These types of ringtones have been variously referred to as truetones, mastertones or realtones. In contrast to monophonic and polyphonic tones, truetones allow a full, high-fidelity recording, including vocals, to be used as a ringtone.  The first format to provide this kind of experience was AMR-WB, which began being incorporated into Nokia phones in around 2004.  The new format allowed an excerpt from the original recording or master track to be used as a ringtone, although a number of ringtone businesses opted to use cover versions of the track in order to reduce the licensing cost paid to the record labels.    

At the present time, we are seeing the emergence of the fourth and final phase in the evolution of ringtone formats. AMR has already been largely super-ceded by ringtones that use the same format as full track downloads such as MP3, AAC, or WMA.   For example, the new Apple iphone uses the same format for ringtones (AAC) as it uses for full tracks sold over itunes.  One side-effect of this shift towards formats such as mp3 is the ability of users to create their own ringtones, either by uploading a full track to their phone or creating a ringtone by clipping the track in an audio editing programme. 

With the convergence of ringtones with standard digital music formats such as mp3, the history of ringtone format technology appears to be at an end. It seems that mobile is now a part of the mainstream music market, rather than operating in its own separate world.