重点 (Top highlight)
Before the iPhone, Venmo, or Spotify, there were ringtones. You might remember them fondly as those lo-fidelity sounds we used to communicate our highly refined music tastes every time someone called our cell. But ringtones were so much more than that. A billion-dollar industry silenced seemingly overnight, ringtones laid the foundations of modern mobile consumer technology and set the stage for the app store and mobile commerce as we know it today. And they are proof that even silly-seeming products can have an impact long after their memory fades away.
乙 EFORE的iPhone，Venmo，或Spotify的，有手机铃声。 您可能会怀念它们，因为每次有人给我们的手机打电话时，我们用来传达高度精致的音乐品味的低保真声音。 但是铃声远远不止这些。 十亿美元的产业似乎一夜之间无声无息，铃声奠定了现代移动消费技术的基础，并为我们今天所知的应用程序商店和移动商务奠定了基础。 而且他们证明，即使看起来很傻的产品也会在记忆消失后很长时间产生影响。
铃声的兴起 (The rise of the ringtone)
The first mobile phone call was not made by a silk-shirted Miami cocaine dealer in the ’80s, but by a driver in St. Louis in 1946 from a heavyweight wireless system installed in an automobile. It took another 40 years to make mobile phones portable, reliable, and affordable enough (relatively speaking) to offer to the mainstream consumer.
第一次电话不是80年代迈阿密一家穿着丝绸衬衫的可卡因商人，而是1946年圣路易斯的一名驾驶员通过安装在汽车上的重量级无线系统拨打的。 又花了40年的时间，使手机具有足够的便携性，可靠性和价格(相对而言)可以提供给主流消费者。
Even then, cellphones didn’t quite go “mainstream.” A common reaction in the 1980s was: Wow, that’s slick (it being the ’80s and all), quickly followed up with but, like, who really needs a portable phone? The president… maybe? At the time, it was hard for ordinary people to imagine having to be reachable at any minute of the day.
即使到那时，手机也不是“主流”。 在1980年代，一个普遍的React是： 哇，这很漂亮 (它是80年代及以后的所有产品)，很快就跟进了， 但是，例如，谁真的需要便携式电话 ？ 总统...也许？ 当时，普通人很难想象必须在一天中的任何时刻都可以到达。
It wasn’t until the ’90s that owning a cellphone became relatively commonplace. But then another problem reared its head. In the early part of the decade, phones came with preset, annoying, monophonic ringtones. Never ones to miss an opportunity to spend R&D dollars on minor inconveniences, the telcos manufactured a feature that allowed users to input custom ringtones. The Digital Minimo D319, released in 1996, was a Japanese-made device on which users could program custom ringtones by entering combinations of boops and beeps associated with keys on the number pad.
直到90年代，拥有手机才变得相对司空见惯。 但是随后又出现了另一个问题。 在本世纪初期，电话带有预设的，令人讨厌的单音铃声。 电信运营商提供了一项功能，使用户可以输入自定义铃声，而这绝不会错过在较小的麻烦上花费研发资金的机会。 1996年发布的Digital Minimo D319是日本制造的设备，用户可以在其上通过输入与数字键盘上的按键相关联的嘟嘟声和嘟嘟声的组合来编程自定义铃声。
A book that taught users to recreate popular songs sold 3.5 million copies in its first year.
一部教用户重制流行歌曲的书在发行的第一年就卖出了350万张。
Then, in 1998, a Finnish engineer tired of Nokia’s preset monotone interfering with his weekday hangovers (no joke) found a way to transfer audio files directly to his phone through text message and the ringtone revolution began in earnest. By 2002, 30% of all SMS traffic were requests for downloadable ringtones.
然后，在1998年，一位芬兰工程师厌倦了诺基亚预设的单调干扰他的工作日宿醉 (不开玩笑) ，他找到了一种通过短信直接将音频文件传输到手机的方法，并且铃声革命开始了。 到2002年， 所有SMS流量中有30％是对可下载铃声的请求。
The rise of the custom ringtone, like many innovations, happened gradually, then all at once.
像许多创新一样，自定义铃声的兴起是逐渐发生的，然后一次出现。
The ingredients were mostly in place by the mid-90s: Network operators hungry to make back their deep infrastructure investments and diversify their revenue streams, devices manufactured to make sound with the capacity to send and receive digitized data, and a proof of concept — customizable ringtones enabled by number pads in Asia and text messaging in Europe that proved demand.
这些要素大部分都在90年代中期就已经到位：网络运营商渴望收回其深厚的基础设施投资并分散其收入来源，制造能够发出声音并具有发送和接收数字化数据能力的设备，以及概念验证(可定制)事实证明，由亚洲的数字键盘启用的铃声和在欧洲的短信传递的铃声。
Consumers jumped on custom ringtones because they represented the first mainstream way of getting portable music, on demand. No store, no CDs, no desktops. That was revolutionary — imagine the possibilities! People could define themselves in a unique way. Ringtones became an audio fashion accessory that users, young ones in particular, loved.
消费者之所以选择自定义铃声，是因为它们代表了随需应变获取便携式音乐的第一种主流方式。 没有商店，没有CD，没有台式机。 那是革命性的-想象可能性！ 人们可以以独特的方式定义自己。 铃声已成为用户(尤其是年轻人)钟爱的音频时尚配饰。
The only problem was, selling custom ringtones constituted explicit copyright infringement.
唯一的问题是，出售自定义铃声会构成明显的版权侵权。
But two things happened in the late ’90s: 1) the rise of music piracy and 2) the development of digital micropayment technology. The former sunk music publishing revenues as CD sales plummeted; the latter created centralized micropayments platforms that could effectively collect royalties to be paid to music publishers in a way the web could not.
但是在90年代后期发生了两件事：1)音乐盗版的兴起和2)数字小额支付技术的发展。 由于CD销量直线下降，前者的音乐发行收入下降； 后者创建了集中式小额支付平台，该平台可以有效收集以网络无法支付的版权费支付给音乐发行商。
Custom ringtones showed technologists the power of frictionless payment and frictionless payment-enabled software to eat the world.
自定义铃声向技术人员展示了无摩擦支付和支持无摩擦支付的软件的强大功能。
When music publishers and labels saw the potential for ringtones to reverse declining sales revenues, they entered into royalty agreements with telecoms and ringtone providers.
当音乐发行商和唱片公司看到铃声可能扭转销售收入下降的趋势时，他们与电信和铃声提供商签订了版权使用费协议。
And so the stage was set. We blasted into the new millennium frantically searching our pockets for the 8-bit renditions of Smash Mouth and Shaggy that emanated from them. By the early 2000s, all the major record labels partnered with mobile operators to distribute and monetize the ringtone. At the time, observers proclaimed the ringtone to be the new single, and hailed the trend as “an industry shift no less important than the shift from the radio to the internet.”
这样就设置了舞台。 我们闯入了新的千年，疯狂地搜索我们的衣袋，寻找其中产生的Smash Mouth和Shaggy的8位演绎形式。 到2000年代初，所有主要唱片公司都与移动运营商建立了合作伙伴关系，以将铃声分发并从中获利。 当时，观察家称铃声为新单曲， 并称这种趋势为“行业转移同从广播向互联网的转移同样重要”。
Although that view didn’t age well, you can’t blame industry analysts for espousing it. The custom ringtone industry in the United States grew from $68 million in 2003 to $600 million in 2006. So many ringtones were sold — an estimated 520 million ringtones between 2001 and 2007 — that the Recording Industry Association of America instituted ringtone charts and awards associated with them. Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop,” for instance, went platinum five times.
尽管这种观点不能很好地解决，但是您不能责怪行业分析师拥护它。 美国的定制铃声行业从2003年的6800万美元增长到2006年的6亿美元。售出了如此多的铃声(2001年至2007年间估计有5.2亿个铃声)，美国唱片业协会制定了与之相关的铃声图表和奖项。他们。 例如，莉尔·韦恩(Lil Wayne)的“棒棒糖”(Lollipop)曾五次获得白金奖。
Ringtones seeped into popular culture. Instead of music influencing ringtones, ringtones began to influence music. A wave of chart-topping rappers, including Soulja Boy, T-Pain, and J-Kwon made music designed to sound good as polyphonic ringtones. Ringtones became a form of marketing, a popular way for record labels to promote artists and albums, and served as cultural currency, offered as marketing incentives tied to a variety of promotional campaigns.
铃声渗入了流行文化。 铃声不再影响音乐，而是开始影响音乐。 包括Soulja Boy，T-Pain和J-Kwon在内的一波排榜首的说唱歌手创作了听起来像和弦铃声的音乐。 铃声已成为一种营销形式，一种流行的唱片公司标签来促进艺术家和专辑的销售方式，并被用作文化货币，作为与各种促销活动相关的营销动机。
The world’s needle fit snugly with the ringtone’s polyphonic groove. But as quickly as they jingled into our pockets, consumers hung up on them.
世界各地的针头与铃声的和弦凹槽紧密贴合。 但是，一旦他们挤进我们的衣袋，消费者就垂涎三尺。
再见再见 (Bye, bye, bye)
Few of us foresaw the fall of the custom ringtone industry.
我们很少有人预见到定制铃声行业的衰落。
From a 2007 peak of $1.1 billion in global ringtone sales, the industry shrunk by 97% in the following decade. “Admittedly, it was a little sad,” recalled an executive with BMI, a music publisher. “In BMI’s early digital days, we made more money from ringtones than anything else; it accounted for more than half of our income stream. And now when you think about it, it’s basically zero.”
从2007年全球铃声销售额11亿美元的峰值开始，该行业在接下来的十年中萎缩了97％。 音乐发行商BMI的一位高管回忆说： “诚然，这有点令人难过。” “在BMI早期的数字时代，我们从铃声中赚到的钱比其他任何东西都要多； 它占了我们收入来源的一半以上。 现在，当您考虑它时，它基本上为零。”
There are a few likely reasons for its decline:
下降的原因可能有几个：
People stopped calling in favor of texting each other. Between 2008 and 2010, ringtone revenue declined 25% just as the average voice minutes used by 18–34-year-olds, the ringtone’s main customers, declined by roughly the same amount.
人们不再打电话支持互相发短信。 在2008年至2010年之间， 铃声收入下降了25％ ，而铃声的主要客户18-34岁的用户平均通话时长下降了大致相同的数量 。
The novelty of being able to customize phones wore off. As our phones evolved to offer web access, videos, games, and social networking 1.0, downloading and configuring ringtones was no longer particularly novel, especially with the rise of smartphones.
能够定制手机的新颖性逐渐消失。 随着我们的电话逐渐发展为提供Web访问，视频，游戏和社交网络1.0 ，下载和配置铃声不再特别新颖，尤其是随着智能手机的兴起。
The ubiquity of ringing devices forced us to develop cultural mores around our phones. With cellphones going fully mainstream, our culture evolved to solve for the cacophony of sounds they blasted in social settings — conference rooms, dinner tables, movie theatres — with a simple switch of the phone to vibrate.
铃声设备无处不在迫使我们围绕手机开发文化习惯。 随着手机逐渐成为主流，我们的文化得以发展，以解决他们在会议室，饭桌，电影院等社交环境中发出的刺耳的声音，只需将手机切换为振动即可。
And my favorite theory: Crazy Frog killed it. In more eloquent words than my own:
The eventual ubiquity of a Swedish teenager’s imitation of a two-stroke moped engine applied to an ambiguously genitalled cartoon frog may finally have exhausted what little patience the consuming public had for overpriced novelty call alerts.
瑞典少年最终仿制应用于模棱两可的卡通青蛙的二冲程轻便摩托车，最终可能使疲倦的公众对价格过高的新颖性电话警报失去了一点耐心。
Given the rapid pace of innovation in mobile technology, it’s not surprising that a pop-culture meme like the ringtone fell prey to the digital world’s inexorable thirst for innovation. But that we almost completely erased its role in our digital evolution from our collective memory is less excusable.
鉴于移动技术创新的飞速发展，像手机铃声这样的流行文化模因成为数字世界对创新的无比渴望的牺牲品也就不足为奇了。 但是我们几乎无法从集体记忆中完全抹去它在数字进化中的作用。
铃声如何塑造现代世界 (How ringtones shaped the modern world)
In many ways, the custom ringtone made today’s digital age possible.
自定义铃声在许多方面使当今的数字时代成为可能。
Ringtones introduced the concept of a digital store selling digital things made by a variety of creators. Today we call it an app store, a concept that didn’t exist 20 years ago but that has since become a fundamental building block of the digital world. When NPP, Japan’s pioneering telco, made ringtones available for their customers to purchase, they realized that 1) there’s very little marginal cost to “storing” digital products on their platform; 2) that it’s therefore in their interest to have as much content as humanly possible; and that 3) relying on ringtone providers alone constrains the amount of content they can offer.
铃声引入了数字商店的概念，该商店出售各种创作者制作的数字产品。 今天，我们将其称为应用商店，这个概念在20年前并不存在，但自那以后已成为数字世界的基本构建块。 当日本的先锋电信公司NPP向用户提供铃声时，他们意识到：1)在其平台上“存储”数字产品的边际成本很小； 2)因此，从人类的角度出发，拥有尽可能多的内容符合他们的利益； 3)仅依靠铃声提供商会限制他们可以提供的内容量。
With this in mind, NPP developed the world’s first app store as we conceive of it today: A platform that provided tools for developers to develop content, a system for micropayments and digital services, and an application environment that users valued and trusted enough to open their wallets. By opening the platform to developers, a whole ecosystem of digital products sprung up around the ringtone app stores, including prerecorded, humorous voicemail greetings (humorous being generously defined), custom wallpapers, ringback tones (remember when some people had songs play when you called them?), custom alarm sounds, and more.
考虑到这一点，NPP开发了今天我们构想的世界上第一个应用程序商店：一个平台为开发人员提供了开发内容的工具，小额支付和数字服务的系统以及用户重视和信任的，足以打开的应用程序环境他们的钱包。 通过向开发人员开放平台，整个数字产品生态系统在铃声应用程序商店中如雨后春笋般冒出，包括预先录制的幽默语音邮件问候语(幽默地定义了幽默感)，自定义壁纸，回铃音(记住当您打电话时有人在播放歌曲时)他们吗？)，自定义警报声音等等。
The technological breakthroughs needed to bring a mobile app store to life, combined with ringtones’ popularity, cemented the app store’s role as critical infrastructure for the coming Digital Age. Custom ringtones showed technologists the power of frictionless payment and frictionless payment-enabled software to eat the world. It incentivized creators and developers to create while building consumer habits around digital purchasing that underpin today’s digital economy.
使移动应用程序商店栩栩如生所需的技术突破，以及铃声的普及，巩固了该应用程序商店作为即将到来的数字时代的关键基础设施的作用 。 自定义的铃声向技术人员展示了无摩擦支付和支持无摩擦支付的软件给世界带来的力量。 它激励创作者和开发者创造创造力，同时建立围绕数字购买的消费者习惯，以支撑当今的数字经济。
A defining feature of the digital world is the intricate link between all of our smart devices.
数字世界的主要特征是我们所有智能设备之间的错综复杂的联系。
Custom ringtones were also most people’s first exposure to the magic of on-demand anything. Never before could the average consumer order something with the press of a button and get it immediately, regardless of where they were. This facilitated impulsive buying behavior (more on how that can be harnessed for good here) and stoked the public’s imagination with the possibilities of the new digital frontier.
自定义铃声也是大多数人第一次接触到随需应变的魔力。 普通消费者从未按过按钮就可以订购某件东西，而无论它们在哪里，都可以立即得到。 这促进了冲动购买行为(更多关于如何能够驾驭好这里 )，并与新的数字前沿的可能性激起了公众的想象力。
With the establishment of on-demand digital stores and the trivial marginal costs of adding more content, consumers suddenly got mobile access to the long tail. Musicians without record deals could make their content available to a wide audience on demand, and make money off of it. For the first time, creators were able to skip pay-to-play channels like record stores or the radio to market their content.
随着按需数字商店的建立以及增加更多内容的微不足道的边际成本，消费者突然获得了移动访问的便利。 没有唱片交易的音乐家可以按需将其内容提供给广大听众，并从中赚钱。 创作者们第一次能够跳过唱片商店或广播等付费频道来销售其内容。
Disintermediation is a peach of a narrative and Spotify, Soundcloud, and others gobbled it whole, without realizing that the custom ringtone germinated its seeds years earlier. The founder of Jamster, a German ringtone provider, said it clearly in 2006:
Disintermediation是一部叙述性的桃子，Spotify，Soundcloud和其他公司则将其整个吞噬了，却没有意识到自定义铃声早在几年前就发芽了。 德国铃声提供商Jamster的创始人在2006年明确表示：
[Jamster] gives incentives for generating new content every day. The more content there is and the better I can sell it, the more the whole industry — and particularly the artists — will profit. I live from the long tail.
[Jamster]鼓励每天生成新内容。 内容越多，我卖得越好，整个行业(尤其是艺术家)将获得更多利益。 我住在长长的尾巴上。
There was another conceptual role that ringtones played: connecting our phones to the rest of our electronics. When cellphones came out, they were perceived as a standalone piece of consumer hardware, much like a dishwasher or a radio might be. There wasn’t much linking the cellphone to other parts of the consumer electronics ecosystem, like the personal computer. You used one to make calls and the other to draw portraits of your turtle on Microsoft Paint.
铃声还扮演着另一个概念性角色：将手机连接到其他电子设备。 手机问世时，它们被视为独立的消费类硬件，很像洗碗机或收音机。 手机与个人计算机等消费电子生态系统的其他部分之间的链接并不多。 您曾经使用一个进行呼叫，而另一个则在Microsoft Paint上绘制了乌龟的肖像。
But a defining feature of the digital world is the intricate link between all of our smart devices. It’s standard today to think of our phones as an extension of our computers or tablets: our data syncs automatically, we bookmark content on the phone to finish watching or reading on our computers, we share music libraries, respond to iMessages on our laptops, and so on. That was hard to imagine back when Gorbachev showed off his Nokia.
但是，数字世界的一个基本特征是我们所有智能设备之间的错综复杂的联系。 如今，将手机视为计算机或平板电脑的扩展是当今的标准：我们的数据会自动同步，我们将手机上的内容添加为书签，以完成在计算机上的观看或阅读，我们共享音乐库，在笔记本电脑上回复iMessage，以及以此类推。 当戈尔巴乔夫(Gorbachev)炫耀他的诺基亚时，很难想象。
The custom ringtone showed both consumers and innovators the potential of redefining the phone as an extension of the computer, which was foundational for the development of the smartphone. First, one popular way to get ringtones (especially if you wanted them for free) was to download them onto your computer and then transfer them over to your phone, usually via Bluetooth. Second, to set up or change a ringtone, you had to dive into the phone’s operating system, a snorkeling adventure that, while not particularly complicated, involved the concept of nested folders, settings menus, and choice architecture. It exposed curious consumers to the shared operating principles common to both computers and phones.
定制铃声向消费者和创新者展示了重新定义手机作为计算机扩展功能的潜力，这是智能手机发展的基础。 首先，一种流行的获取铃声的方法(尤其是如果您免费获取铃声)是将其下载到计算机上，然后通常通过蓝牙将其传输到手机上。 其次，要设置或更改铃声，您必须深入研究手机的操作系统，这虽然不是特别复杂，但却涉及嵌套文件夹，设置菜单和选择架构的浮潜冒险。 它使好奇的消费者接触到计算机和电话共有的共享操作原理。
There was another subplot that, inadvertently, drew a causal link between the ringtone and popularization of the smartphone. In the early 2000s, Apple had a plan to grow iTunes, its music app. On the heels of the global success of the iPod, they would partner with Motorola, the industry-leading manufacturer of the RAZR, to develop a cellphone with iTunes built-in. The idea got people very excited. But the result of that now unfathomable tryst was the Rokr E790 Candy Bar:
还有一个子情节在不经意间画出了手机的铃声和普及之间的因果关系。 在2000年代初期，苹果公司计划发展其音乐应用程序iTunes。 在iPod在全球范围内取得成功之后，他们将与RAZR的行业领先制造商摩托罗拉合作，开发内置iTunes的手机。 这个想法使人们非常兴奋。 但是，现在令人难以置信的幽会结果是Rokr E790 Candy Bar：
The phone turned out to be an abject user experience failure. It had a 100 song limit regardless of how much space you actually had left, and it was painfully slow at uploading songs from iTunes. Crucially, you couldn’t use it to buy ringtones or music remotely. Distributors had to slash its price within two months of launch. For Steve Jobs this was an eye-opening reminder: own your damn hardware. He took his intended strategy — develop a phone that had the iPod’s music playing capabilities as a way to capture a piece of the mobile segment while building a moat around Apple’s music business — and he built the iPhone, the vanguard of the smartphone revolution to come.
该电话原来是一个令人沮丧的用户体验失败 。 不管您实际剩余多少空间，它最多只能容纳100首歌曲，而且从iTunes上传歌曲的速度非常慢。 至关重要的是，您不能使用它远程购买铃声或音乐。 发行商必须在发布后的两个月内大幅度降低其价格。 对于史蒂夫·乔布斯来说，这令人大开眼界：拥有该死的硬件。 他采取了既定的策略-开发一款具有iPod音乐播放功能的手机，以此在占领苹果音乐业务的护城河的同时，占领了一部分移动市场-并且他制造了iPhone，这将成为智能手机革命的先锋。
铃声的持久遗产 (Ringtones’ lasting legacy)
Ringtones remind me of childhood. Of the time I showed my mom how her device could bleat a monophonic rendition of Brahms’ “Hungarian Dances,” of how incredulous she seemed, how her eyes glimmered with wonder and curiosity. Of how she kept it as her ringtone for years to come.
铃声让我想起了童年。 在我向妈妈展示她的设备如何使勃拉姆斯的“ 匈牙利舞 ”的单音形式变幻时 ，她看上去多么令人难以置信，她的眼睛如何充满惊奇和好奇心。 她如何在未来几年内将其作为手机铃声。
I learned to download ringtones for free onto my parents’ phones and I remember how proud I felt as I would scroll through the recent downloads in waiting rooms, in bank lines, in backseats, my mom nearby worrying about whatever grown-ups worried about. I’d play my new acquisitions on her phone — Backstreet Boys, System of a Down, Black Eyed Peas — just loud enough for others to hear but quiet enough to avoid her scolding.
我学会了免费将铃声下载到父母的手机上，我记得当我滚动浏览最近在候诊室，银行排队，后座上的下载内容时感到非常自豪，我附近的妈妈担心任何大人都会担心。 我会在她的手机上播放我的新唱片-Backstreet Boys，“羽绒系统”，“黑眼豆豆”，声音足以让其他人听到，但又足够安静，可以避免骂她。
Yes, it’s great we aren’t living in an endless menagerie of electronic sounds competing with each other for attention. But in some ways it’s sad they’ve all but disappeared from our lives: Little packages of sound like parcels of identity sent from pockets and handbags, announcing someone else needing you, or thinking of you, or inviting you to something.
是的，这很棒，我们不会生活在无尽的电子声音中，彼此争夺注意力。 但是从某些方面来说，他们却从我们的生活中消失了，这很可悲：从口袋和手袋里发出的包裹像是包裹着身份的小包裹，宣布其他人需要你，或者想着你，或者邀请你去做某事。
So I guess it is some consolation that we chose to walk through the doors that the world of ringtones opened for us and live today in the possibilities it presented.
因此，我想这是一种安慰，我们选择走过铃声世界为我们打开的大门，并活在当下呈现的可能性中。
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