Rating: We’re not sure the story is entirely true, of course
There’s nothing better to generate a bit of publicity for your mobile service than getting a story into the UK’s best selling daily newspaper – The Sun. GoMo News couldn’t find this story online so we’ll have to tell you what was printed on page 31 (there’s a 1 after that 3) today [January 12th 2011]. Under the headline – ‘Dumped by – tone’, the article had this sentence … “The Ringtagz service lets users record individual messages that only selected callers can hear.” Um you can’t do that right now because we have just checked.* Rivals can do so, however. Still, it has least put the idea of ringback tones (RBTs) into the Great British public’s consciousness.As The Sun rightly points out, the Ringtagz (RBT) service is created by London-based Muzicall. And, yes, it is possible to play a specific tune which is only heard by one single person on RingTagz.
However, unless Muzicall is intending to change its business model as of today, you cannot upload an MP3 file to the RingTagz service.
So you couldn’t create a special message to “dump unwanted partners” as The Sun claims.
Actually, as Cool Tone points out in his Cooltonesblog here there is one way of uploading MP3s to a ringback tones service by swapping over to Vectone Mobile.
Muzicall is now supplying its ringback tone (RBT) service to four out of the Top Six UK operators: – 3 UK, T-Mobile; Virgin; and Orange. That leaves Vodafone (UK) and O2 without a RBT offering.
So, let’s get back to Ringtagz as a vehicle for “dumping unwanted partners.”
If you could find the right tune on the Ringtagz service, it would be possible to play that only to one specific person.
And GoMo News suspects – as the Sun implies – that you put a notice on Facebook showing what you’ve just done on Ringtagz, the injured party just might get the message.
Our first choice of tune for dumping a female partner would, of course, be The Mavericks Dance the Night Away. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll get what we mean.
Sadly, that’s not available via the Ringtagz service at present (at least on Orange UK’s version that is). But we did fin Morrissey’s One Day Goodbye will be Farewell. A bit of a hint.
I’m sure our friends at Muzicall will have a perfectly good explanation for all of this which probably involves its RBT for business offering. Not aimed at consumers, though, is it?
* UPDATE:
Actually you can record your own Ringtagz now. However, you have to do so by joining this page on Facebook. There’s a section which entitled ‘Or create your own’. As our friends at Muzicall say, “Secondly a link on the web site will soon be available.” Always a good idea that as it is the first place anybody would look.
