Nobody cares about your band’s ringtone.

At the risk of coming off a little peevish today…

I have been BOM. BAR. DED. with companies wanting me to plug their “we make ringtones for unsigned artists” services. And I have turned down every single one.

Why?

Nobody cares about your band’s ringtone.

As I blog this morning from a cafe, I have heard at least eight different ringtones go off. Nobody has stopped anyone to ask what ringtone they’re using. Mostly, people cringe.

Ringtones are important to the extent that you can deepen your relationship with a core audience member by offering them a ringtone. They’re reminded of you when their phone goes off. But this is not the huge “word of mouth” phenomenon marketers are trying to lead you to believe. With today’s phones, you can accomplish the same result by chopping down a hook from your song into a small MP3. You don’t have to pay someone $500 to encode your song into a universal, polyphonic ringtone.

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2 responses

  1. Ringtones for Bands are Overrated

    I’ve been thinking about this one for awhile. I keep getting all of these “offers” for me to add my ringtone to directories, promising me tons of marketing opportunities to get my music out to the world. They claim that if someone …

  2. i have thought about making a ringtone, and then i remembered that cell phones are not cool for my audience one bit. when the sanguine, jason anderson, or tigersaw plays a show, people are expected to be quiet and respectful. especially with the phones. how akward would it be if someones ring tone was a sanguine song?