Ringy-Dingy Thingies

I’m an old-fashioned guy. I don’t have a cell phone, so I don’t need a customized ring tone.

This blog, however, is thoroughly cutting-edge. So when I heard about these eight distinctive short MP3s, I thought, “Oh, the young kids today, they love this stuff. They can use it for their ringy-dingy thingys.” From Wired.com:

Last year, Americans spent an estimated $600 million on ringtones, thanks to the popularity of realtones — those 10- to 30-second snippets of popular songs. But with tinny sound and abrupt edits, they’re a sorry substitute for the real thing. Now preeminent indie rockers They Might Be Giants have embraced the ringtone as a stand-alone medium. The Brooklyn-based band, which was an early short-form innovator with “Dial-a-Song” – an answering machine that played a different tune each day for callers – has started composing original songlettes as an alternative to the canned loop. “We take a little sketch of a lyric or idea and make it as intense as possible,” says singer-songwriter John Flansburgh. “These songs are built for repeated listens.” To prove it, TMBG composed several original “snacktones” just for Wired readers.

They’re free downloads.