Free Republic

Islamic militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, which border Afghanistan have issued a decree banning music from mobile phone ringtones and vehicles in tribal areas of the country. A spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Maulana Faqir Mohammed said, the they would not allow commuters to play music in their cars or use musical ringtones on mobile phones. He warned that offenders would be punished according to Shariah laws. Maulana Faqir Mohammed has been an outlaw in the region due to his reported close contact with Taliban and al-Qaeda elements. He has however been disowned by the tribal elders, who in 2006...

Why wear a campaign button. If you want to support your Presidential candidate, why not try a ringtone instead? This site (which I found through a friend's blog) has some...uh...interesting ideas for ringtones for some of the candidates for the '08 elections. I have no idea who these people are...but you might find them amusing.

While I’m no huge fan of the “all singing, all dancing” mobiles that announce every incoming call by belting out a section of a song--particularly since they tend to use songs that I don’t want stuck in my mind for the next hour--ringtones are extremely popular and a big money business, so they’re not going away anytime soon. The latest version of iTunes now allows users to select from a half million songs in the iTunes Store that can be “upgraded” from a regular 99 cent track to a ringtone by paying another 99 cents to carve out a user-defined,...

CHICAGO, March 31 (UPI) -- The muezzin is calling. But the cleric is not in a minaret, above the town square, reminding all that it is time to face Mecca and pray. He's a digital muezzin, calling on the mobile phone of the worldwide faithful, with a daily reminder ringtone. Experts are telling United Press International's Wireless World that religious ringtones -- and ringback tones -- are growing in popularity throughout the world amongst people of faith. "Music expresses who someone is," Cindy Mesaros, vice president of marketing at Moderati Inc., a mobile-phone ringtone developer based in San Francisco, told...

The ‘Crazy Frog’ – I thought that the Nokia ringtone was bad until this one arrived.

LONDON (AP) - A cell-phone ring tone appeared set to top the British singles chart Sunday, outselling the new single by the band Coldplay by nearly four to one, a music retailer said. "Crazy Frog Axel F," a ring tone based on the sound of a revving Swedish mo-ped, is the first tune being used on mobile phones to cross into mainstream music charts, said Gennaro Castaldo, a spokesman for HMV, the British music retailing chain. Coldplay had hoped to go straight to No. 1 on this Sunday's British singles chart with its new song, "Speed of Sound." But by...

Two U.S.-based mobile industry groups are trying to rein in a Wild West market for cell-phone downloads, publishing a set of "best practices" for selling content such as ringtones, daily messages, and screen backgrounds. Some mobile phone users have lashed out against advertising and sales methods for mobile content sold via text messages, saying they ended up subscribed to ongoing services without knowing it. Earlier this year, a consumer who used VeriSign's Jamster content download service sued the company for alleged fraud and false advertising. Earlier this week, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA)...