It don't ring, it sing

It's as if Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Bach, Rafi, Kishore, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Madonna, and sundry crooners from all corners of the world are all trying to outplay each other at the same time.
Mobile phones are now ringing in a new style of symphony, or is it just cacophony? With each cell phone taking off on a tangential tune, it can turn out to be just that at times.
But nobody is complaining. People seem to love a phone that sings, that too a tune that they love. Sending ring tones across is catching on like SMS. Those who have the time and steam are even visiting websites that offer ring tones.
And there are many websites that offer thousands of tones across all categories of music -- rap, pop, jazz, classical, trans, Bollywood numbers, bhangra.... You can even compose your own tone. Just copy the composer code by keying in the number keys specified for various songs. Nokia is the first telephone to come out with a composer and now other brands are following suit. Samsung is promoting its latest model as a phone that sings.
"It's exciting to have a different tone every day. It's interesting to download and compose tones too," says 23-year-old Apurvo Rao Parthasarathy, who works with a PR firm.
It's all about personalising your ring tone, which can say a lot about you or your kind of music. It's also about splashing a signature style. It sure makes sense, considering when in a public place, it's tough to figure out which phone is ringing.
However all this "tuning around" seems to be happening more among teens or under-30 folks. "I know of CEOs going for signature tones, because it helps the staff to know that the boss's phone is ringing, but otherwise, it's only the teenagers who are into it," Bhanu Kiran, regional sales and marketing manager, JT International.
Agrees architect Vasudevan R Kadalayil: "While in Sidney recently, I heard a phone sing Sare Jahan se achcha... on a bus. It was nice to hear that, but I'm pretty conservative when it comes to having funky tones," he says.
But cell phone service providers continue to get demands for new tones. On demand, Airtel sends 10 to 20 tones to customers every month, says Chintu N. Kale, customer care executive. Spice Telecom directs its customers to phoneytunes.com, according to Shikha Mohan, customer care executive.