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The Rise and Fall of Music Ringtones: A Statistical Analysis
What happened to the music ringtone?
At its peak, Crazy Frog captured 31% of the UK ringtone market, generating over £40 million in sales in 2005, driven by an extensive advertising blitz where the song was featured up to 26 times a day on British television (per channel), reaching an estimated 87% of the population. I'll start with the mushiest explanation: music ringtones were a novelty that solved no tangible problem, and after a handful of purchases, people grew tired of hearing 30-second snippets of "Candy Shop" and "Ms. New Booty" on repeat. And if you somehow feel nostalgic for the 2000s ringtone boom, remember that this medium's commercial zenith was a frog-centric Frankenstein born from a Swedish teenager making an irritating noise, which may be the textbook definition of a cultural product nobody asked for.
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