In the UK if you are looking at ringtones on the internet the charges per ringtone normally range from between £3.00 - £4.50 per ringtone. Bearing in mind these ringtones are normally only snippets of tunes how is it that ringtone companies can justify their pricing?

In the US the average price for a single ringtone is $1.99. At today’s exchange rate that equates to approximately £1.06 per ringtone. A huge difference. Consumers in the US can get 3 ringtones for the price of our 1!

Most modern mobile phones now have the ability to play MP3 files so a cheaper option may be to buy the whole track rather than the 20 seconds or so that the ringtone companies sell.

A single track on iTunes could cost around 79p and bearing in mind this is the full track and not just a snippet it represents great value for money in comparison.

Now the ringtone companies may argue that in giving you the snippet you are getting the best part of the tune for your money. This may well be true but is also down to personal taste. What they think might be your favourite part of the song you may disagree with. With a bit of effort if you have the full track you can edit the file to your own preference and get exactly what you want.

There is a range of software available that enables you to do this, some free and some paid for. It’s something worth investigating if your someone who likes to change your ringtone often or want more choice of what’s available.

Ringtones are still big business and a multi-billion dollar industry but how long will it be before this dies down?

Mobile phones have come a long way since the days of beep beep monophonic ringtones. Mono ringtones due to their basic nature were relatively easy to compose as well and most monophonic ringtone phones towards the end would include a composer that allowed you to compose your own ringtones.

A big boost to the ringtone industry was the introduction of polyphonic ringtones. These were much more believable and a lot of the professionally recorded ringtones actually sounded like the song they were based on. Being multi-toned ringtones they were much more difficult to compose for the average mobile phone user and the only option open to you if you wanted your favourite song as a ringtone was to buy it. This usually involved calling a premium rate telephone to place your order and a download link would then be sent to your phone for you to get your chosen ringtone.

As the market grew so did the options for payment and the introduction of reverse sms billing and the subscription model.

The trouble with the subscription system was that it was often miss-sold with the lure of “Free Ringtones” and aimed mainly at kids who didn’t know any better and before you knew it you could have been charged a £100 or so before you realised. You only have to look at the complaints at Grumbletext to see the underlying problem. Naturally as this problem gained more and more press attention people have become wiser to these so called “Free Ringtones” offers often with a negative effect. Are they becoming too scared to order ringtones just in case they end up on a subscription?

This may all become irrelevant soon as more and more mobile phones now have the capability to play MP3 files. It’s a simple enough process now to transfer an MP3 to your phone that you may already have on your iPod and use that as your ringtone.

Ringtones sales I’m sure will peak and start to decline now but it’s not all bad news for the suppliers. There is a constantly growing market for other mobile phone content including games, videos, wallpapers, screensavers and mobile TV and who knows what else in the future.

Just when you thought ringtones couldn’t get any more ridiculous than the pesky Crazy Frog, enter the silent ringtones.

A silent ringtone has been invented that produces a sound outside of the hearing range of most adults. Kids can now have a silent ringtone on their mobiles that they can use at school to alert them of a call or text message without the teachers hearing it.

Silent ringtones also know as ultrasonic ringtones or the Mosquito ringtone are constructed of sounds above a certain frequency usually 16kHz but go as high as 18kHz. The idea being that kids should choose the highest frequency they can hear as they are less likely to be detected by adults.

The other option for them was to have their phones on vibrate but when your phone vibrates it makes a noise that everyone can hear.

Can you hear it? Try it here.

Now I can’t hear the silent ringtone, I guess I’m too old and whilst I don’t agree with kids having mobile phones in classrooms the silent ringtone could go a long way to solving the noise pollution of other annoying ringtones that they may have on their phones instead.

So I for one am all for silent ringtones so all you kids out there, go get one now!

Never one to miss an opportunity Channel 4’s Big Brother has released some great voice tones of the Big Brother contestants.

Some of the Big Brother ringtones available are:

Nikki: Who Is She?
Pete: Let Me Out
Glyn: Oh No!
Spiral: Spiral Rap
Richard: We Kicked Your Ass
Imogen: DJ Imogen
Aisleyne: Crazy Giggles
Jennie: DJ Jennie
Jayne: Wet Myself
Michael: My Brethren
Susie: Knicker Worry

A couple of these in my opinion are more annoying than the pesky Crazy Frog and I hope I don’t get to hear them anytime soon especially Aisleyne’s Crazzy Giggles which turns my stomach every time I hear that.

If you want a Big Brother ringtone for your mobile you can go to Channel 4 Mobile for more details.