The ringtone dialectic : economy and cultural form / Sumanth Gopinath.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gopinath, Sumanth S.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ring tones--Social aspects.

Ring tones.

Cell phones--Social aspects.

Cell phones.

Cell phone services industry.

Mobile games industry.

Internet entertainment industry.

Digital media--Social aspects.

Digital media.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (393 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A decade ago, the customisable ringtone was ubiquitous. Almost any crowd of cell phone owners could produce a carillon of tinkly, beeping, synthy, musicalised ringer signals. Ringtones quickly became a multi-billion-dollar global industry and almost as quickly faded away. This book charts the rise and fall of the ringtone economy and assesses its effect on cultural production.

Contents:

Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; I The Rise and Fall of the Ringtone Economy; 1 This Business of Ringtones; II Ramifications of the Ringtone's Identity Crisis; 2 Ringtones and the Deskilling of Mobile-Musical Labor; 3 Left Behind; 4 The Ringtone and Its Aesthetic Subgenres in Contemporary Classical Music and Media Performance/Installation Art; III The Ringtone's Dialectical Reversals; 5 The Annoying Thing; 6 The Voice of the Politician and the Geographic Dispersion of the Political Ringtone; 7 A Spectrum of Forms; IV Revivals and the (Universal) Particularization of the Ringtone

8 Personalization and Spectatorship9 What's in a Name? Race and the Ringtone's Revival in (Un-)Popular Music; Epilogue; Notes; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-262-31509-2

0-262-31508-4

OCLC:

855019799