Monday Musing: Tech sounds

Monday Musing: Tech sounds

So originally I wanted to do a Music Monday post, but I don’t have any ideas. You may have noticed the theme for this month’s blog posts being tech. Last week I provided two game soundtracks which are pretty good. Picking out one song to be the title. I was thinking of doing a jump into old sounds of tech past. But the thing is, videos playing those sounds are so short I’m not sure it’s worth embedding them into a blog post.

Got me stuck really. Until I had an idea. These days ringtones and such are rarely heard. Silent mode is very common. People can customize them without effort.

Between the 2000s until 2010, the ringtone business was, well, big. Peaking between 2004–06. Smartphones and better internet access killed the business model off. Combined with high prices and free tones that were custom. Not just that, but bigger memory. Due to the increased access to better mobile networks that were faster, people could download full songs much easier.

For a while, phone makers rushed to create iconic ringtones themselves. You could tell somebody’s phone by the ringtone. Nokia has Francisco Tárrega’s Gran Vals by Czech guitarist Lubomír Brabec. Which was sampled, cut down, and became the song of that brand. Other companies copied the good idea and here we’re. Ringtone has become a symbol of the brand. Are so many other sounds over the years tech has made. We take for granted these littl tunes and notes. That just one example plenty more we don’t notice yet somebody decided sounded good or was important to add.