Cell-phone users in the United States will soon have the option to set their ringers to the song of the pied butcherbird, cry of the screaming piha or tremolo of a loon, among other critters.
Classic Ringtones, which offers about 40 different chirps, roars and calls from various animals, is launching in the United States in late November, after pioneering its nature notes in the United Kingdom last year.
The natural songs are more personalized, peaceful and less offensive than the blasts of bubble-gum pop tunes and ice-cream-truck chimes emanating from most cell phones these days, said Kevin Wooding, director of the company.
"When (a cell phone) rings with an animal ring tone, it's like injecting a bit of nature into technology," Wooding said. "With the nature sound on the telephone, it doesn't have the same kind of alarm effect. It sort of gives it an ambient texture. It fits in with the environment."
Executives are committed to giving the animals a cut of their success. "Songwriter's fees" of 10 percent of each sale will be donated to environmental and nature advocacy groups. Orange, the cell-phone carrier that markets these nature ring tones in the United Kingdom, donated the cut to the World Society for the Protection of Animals. The price hasn't been set yet for the U.S. market, but the ring tones cost 2.5 pounds ($4.60) in the U.K.
AudioRingtone samples:
• chimpanzee
• kookaburra
• northern cardinal
• pied butcherbird
• siberian tiger 1
• siberian tiger 2
"We have a strong commitment to giving something back to the sources from which we derive our work," said Bernie Krause, a bio-acoustician who has spent nearly 30 years recording creatures from microorganisms as small as viruses to large creatures like whales, and whose work can be heard in some of the ring tones. His company, Wild Sanctuary, specializes in natural sound design for museums, zoos and other public spaces.
While the market for ring tones in Europe is more developed, the cell-phone jingles are slowly gaining ground in the United States. Billboard recently announced it will tally the top 20 ring tones sold each week, starting with its Nov. 6 issue.
"The (ring tone) market has nowhere to go but up," said Joe Laszlo, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research. "If I was a provider of unusual ring tones, it might well be a good time to be looking at the U.S. market."
While it is unlikely that nature sounds are going to rocket to the top of the charts, Laszlo said, "as different demographic groups start adopting ring tones and ring-tone-capable phones, we'll only see the size of the total market grow. It's a market that's going to support a lot of different players and a lot of different sounds."
The U.K.'s Orange has sold several thousand of the bird and animal ring tones per month since last November, according to Wooding. In the United States, Classic Ring tones is working on deals with carriers to offer the nature calls; individuals will also be able to download them directly from the company's website starting in late November. In the meantime, they can beta test the service.
The nature sounds only play on phones capable of playing audio ring tones, rather than polyphonic or monophonic tones. According to Jupiter data from July 2004, only 20 percent of U.S. handsets are capable of playing audio ring tones now, but by 2006, every new handset sold in the United States should be capable of playing them, Laszlo said.
"People tend to want to have ring tones of things they already know, things people can relate to," Wooding said. Chimps, the mountain gorilla and Siberian tiger are among the most popular choices. The company is also selling recordings of rarer animals, like the call of the Kauai O'o, a Hawaiian bird presumed to be extinct.
The ring tones are an extension of Krause's work creating natural soundscapes for museums and zoos. He left a successful career in the music industry -- playing with the Weavers folk group and contributing to movie and film soundtracks -- to return to nature.
"I got really bored with the sounds of synthesizers and drum machines and stuff like that because it wasn't played," Krause said. "We were replicating the sounds we had done for other people again and again. I found (the animal world) much more relaxing, much more interesting."
