What Does Your Ringtone Say About You?
By David M. Ewalt

NEW YORK - The next time someone interrupts a meeting with a bleating cell phone ring, listen carefully. They're not just showing bad business etiquette--a person's choice of ringtone might speak volumes about his or her personality.

Most folks pick one of the default ringers that come with their phone or just leave the thing on vibrate. But increasingly, users are paying a premium--usually a buck or two a pop--to download custom songs, jingles and sound effects, turning their mobile phone into a pocket jukebox.

So far, it's mostly young consumers indulging in this form of mobile music-making. According to market analysis firm Consect, 50% of all cell phone users in the U.S. between the ages of 15-30 have downloaded a ringtone at least once. That adds up to big business; ringtones pulled in over $300 million in revenue in the U.S. in 2004, and this year, that revenue should surge to over $600 million. Worldwide, it's a more than $4 billion market--already about a tenth of the size of the overall global music market. By far, ringtones represent the largest source of non-voice revenue for carriers.

But today, most ringtones don't even sound like a real song. They sound like the computer-generated bleeps that they are. So why are so many people willing to spend two dollars to download a 15-second clip? Turns out it's all about customization and personalization. "Ringtones are an opportunity to express yourself," says Colleen LeCount, ringers general manger for Sprint (nyse: FON - news - people ). "People want to stand out from the crowd."

Of course, standing out isn't always the best idea. Do you really want a traffic cop to hear your phone play Bobby Fuller's "I Fought the Law"? Is your boss going to appreciate the musical value of "Baby Got Back"?

Research indicates that people do judge mobile users based on their ringtone. Earlier this year, U.K.-based carrier Tesco Mobile surveyed 1,000 customers and discovered that 21% of them thought having a standard ringtone was "uncool." The survey also concluded that people who use their own recorded voice as a ringtone are self-obsessed, and that users who constantly change their rings might be flighty and unreliable.

No rocket science, that. But there's no doubt that ringtones have become big business because people want to say something personal about themselves. So we wondered, what does your ringtone say about you?

If your phone plays a classic rock tune, you're showing your age, but you get points for figuring out how to change the ringer, Gramps.

If your phone is still playing "Jingle Bell Rock" in July, you're not going to impress people with your productivity.

If your ringtone is a current hip-hop or R&B hit, you're young at heart, but you're not particularly original. Hip-hop ringtones accounted for more than half of the $300 million U.S. market in 2004.

If your phone plays the sound of an old mechanical phone bell, you're not as funny as you think you are.

If your phone plays the theme song to a television show, you're not going to impress anyone with your intellectual acumen. Perhaps a Mozart or Beethoven ringer would do some damage control.

If your phone never leaves vibrate or silent mode, you may be the kind of important person who can't afford to waste time answering a phone call right now. Or maybe you just think you're that important. However, you may also be considerate and respectful, the kind of person we'd like sitting behind us in a movie theater.

Unfortunately, we tend to get saddled with seatmates whose phones play the popular "Crazy Frog," the clucking chicken, or any number of other annoying animal noises. If you're one of these folks, you may be a sociopath.

Hip-hop artists dominate ringtone downloads; Sprint PCS says only two artists have ever gone "platinum" on its network by selling more than a million ringtones off of a single album: Beyoncé Knowles sold more than a million ringtones from Dangerously in Love, as did Usher from Confessions. And the carrier's "gold" albums include Petey Pablo's Diary of a Sinner: 1st Entry, 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' and Lil' Flip's U Gotta Feel Me.

While we're checking the charts, it's worth noting that Virgin Mobile's current top five ringtone downloads are "Grind With Me" by Pretty Ricky, "Just A Lil' Bit" by 50 Cent, "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani, "Wait" by the Yin Yang Twins and "Slow Down" by Bobby Valentino. The carrier's top download of all time is 50 Cent's "In Da Club."

But it's not just kids downloading these hits. Your ringtone doesn't necessarily reflect your larger musical tastes. "It's so different than every type of music consumption," says Sprint's LeCount. "The types of ringers you download are often very different than the CDs you buy."

The effects of annoying ring tones are no joke. In Tesco Mobile's study, 66% of those surveyed had been so annoyed by someone else's ringer that they'd turned off the phone or asked the owner to shut it off. We wonder how long before the first case of road rage-like ringtone violence makes the headlines.

"They can be annoying," admits LeCount. "People change them out quite a bit because of that."

More so than one's CD or movie collection or mp3 playlist, a custom ringtone screams out something personal to the world because it's so public. Anyone within earshot can make an instant assumption about you, for better or worse.

We wonder whether some things aren't better left to the imagination.