The first commercial cellphone with ringtones was the Digital Mova N103 Hyper and sold on May 1996. It had a few preset songs in MIDI format. On September 1996, the Digital Minimo D319 was the first cellphone sold where a user could input an original melody for a ringtone, rather than the preset songs.
The first downloadable cell phone ringtone service was created and delivered in Finland in 1998 when a Finnish mobile company started their service called Harmonium. Harmonium contained both tools for individuals to create monophonic ring tones and a mechanism to deliver them over-the-air via SMS to a mobile handset. On November 1998, Digitalphone Groupe started the similar service in Japan.
TrueTones or Real Music Tones, were first introduced on December 2002, and have revolutionized the ringtone industry. My Gift to You by Chemistry was the first song to be distributed as a truetone music ringtone.
Ringtones spread like wildfire, through Europe, Asia and of course the US. It is fascinating how many people have personalized their cell phones and buy music ringtones, cell phone wallpaper, and bling.
Today, real music ringtones allow people to download and buy ringtones of the hottest and latest tracks within any genre of music, including, pop, hip hop, country, rock, jazz and classical and they are available on lots of different phone carriers, including hot music ringtones, Motorola, Sprint, Nextel and ATT. Hip Hop music ringtones are some of the most popular ringtones to date and there are thousands of ringtones downloaded to your phone every day.
The best part is with today’s technology, ease of use and cheap ringtones services, people can easily buy ringtones and upload new music to their Verizon Wireless cell phones and most carriers and brands as hot and new tracks hit the charts.
