No Revolution

From Reuters: A ringtone soars to top of charts in Britain
'Crazy Frog' single outselling Coldplay hit, takes over No. 1 (Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET May 29, 2005)

LONDON - The Crazy Frog mobile phone ring tone shot straight to the top of the British singles chart on Sunday — the first time a ring tone has achieved such a feat. The Official UK Charts Company said Crazy Frog’s “Axel F”, which went on sale as a CD last week, knocked Coldplay’s new release “Speed Of Sound” into second place.

I highly recommend you read the complete story of how this ring tone came into existence -- it's truly stranger than fiction.

BBC NEWS ARTICLE

Synopsis -- Some kid in Sweden made a home recording of himself imitating the sound of a motorscooter. He gave permission for Jamster (http://www.jamster.co.uk) to post it as a ring tone. Then, somebody along the way mixed a "mash up" of the Swedish kid's mouth music and Axel Funderburk's (sp?) theme song from an 80s movie (Beverly Hills Cop, if memory serves). Viola! A pop culture phenomenon (in the UK at least).

See the video here -- AXEL FROG VIDEO

Note -- You can buy *four* different mixes on the US iTunes music store RIGHT NOW! (Or download the EP for only $3.96).

And now a sobering dose of reality: Polyphonic ring tones remain fairly scarce in the USA. Unlike European cell phone networks that *all* use a 3G network backbone, the USA's cell phone carriers run on something like three network platforms. So, it's costly to post ring tones that work on *everybody's* cell phones; but it's also imperative to release a ring tone that works on *everybody's* phones.

Now some good news: Network aggregators have started up to pull together content (such as text messaging, text voting and ring tone downloads) for multiple USA cell carriers. That's why, for example, you can now vote on American Idol even if you're not using an AT&T/Cingular wireless phone.