The history of classic Nokia ringtones

“One evening the head of marketing stuck his head in Nokia’s engineering room and heard someone playing music on the phones. The technician played music on different frequencies with his friends,” said Thomas Dolby. The man who invented ringtones for Nokia phones spoke about how they chose the tones in an interview BBC In 2011

This “marketing guy” was Nokia’s sales manager Ansi Vanjoki, and engineer Laurie Keevin later became Nokia’s vice president. The sounds on Vanjoki’s test track were rated “very good” according to Dolby.

At this point, the idea of ​​a unique Nokia ringtone flashed into Vanjoki’s mind. At first, Kivin disagreed and felt it was unnecessary. Again he did what he asked.

According to Vanjoki’s vision, the ringtone should be named, but not copyrighted. Under copyright law, a company must pay royalties on the music it uses unless the composer is over 75 years old.

In 1993 Vanjoki chose his career Great Valles Francisco Tarrega, Spanish musician who died in 1909. music notes Great Valles Born in 1902, he was actually inspired by a classical composition by the musical genius Frédéric Chopin. Grand Valley BrilliantIt was founded in 1834.

Great Valles It was also used in 1992. Background music for the launch of the NOKIA 1011. The world’s first mass-produced GSM phone. It was a phone, production stopped in 1994. And it was replaced by the Nokia 2110.

In 1994, the Nokia Tune monophonic ringtone was first available for the Nokia 2100 series, originally named Type 7. Other phones called it Type 13 or 5.

Timo Antilla, one of Nokia’s original music composers, told The Verge: “All of a sudden, cell phone owners wanted their own ringtones. The first ringtones were really annoying, but they changed the acoustics in a unique and amazing way.”

December 1997. This ringtone appeared on the Nokia 6110 as Grande Valse. Two years later, the route changed to Nokia Tuny. Up to this point it was still a monophonic ringtone.

In 2000, the then head of Nokia Audio, Jarko Ilikoski, engineers gradually improved the version of Nokia Tune in many places, including bedrooms. Currently, the group has recruited many new members. One of the recruits was Ian Livingston. “The audio source is limited, but I used MIDI karaoke accompaniments and played them back,” Livingstone said. edge.

A year later, Livingstone released the first Nokia Tune Polyphone. It was first released as a Nokia Korea exclusive in 2002 before going global.

In 2005, Antilla noticed that he could hear the ringtones he and his team had created everywhere. “Back then everyone had their phones on in public, so there was music playing everywhere, it was really weird,” he said.

But not everyone appreciates cute ringtones. Livingstone said his wife wasn’t comfortable with the different versions of Nokia Tune they were trawling through the basement. “It would drive my husband crazy to listen to it over and over for hours,” he said.

After that, Nokia ringtone team further improved Nokia Tune. follow up Another webIn 2010, Nokia Tune was played 1.8 billion times a day, which is over 20,000 times per second.

To this day, Livingstone is proud of the Nokia Twin. “We remember back then, we always worked hard and it was like everyone made history together,” he said.

Bao Lam