After the database error that recently happened here, everything after April 2020 sadly got wiped. I've decided to recreate my thread explaining the usage of library music as preloaded ringtones by phone manufacturers such as Motorola and Nokia.
Motorola:Starting from 2004 and lasting until 2013, Motorola licensed hundreds of tracks from APM Music - encompassing libraries such as KPM Music, CPM, Bruton and Sonoton. This was handled by in-house sound designer Conor O'Sullivan, who had previously written his own ringtones for Motorola. He looked through tracks on APM that sounded sonically interesting enough to work well as ringtones. The deal with APM Music also led to MIDI covers being created by a person named Keith Manners; these were also used on many phones as most of their phones before around 2008 did not have enough memory to have full MP3 ringtone sets, so in many cases the whole set of them were MIDI except about 1-4 of them.
Fellow researcher EpicJake has created a
YouTube playlist of these tracks. We also have a spreadsheet documenting Motorola ringtones
here.
Nokia:While the vast majority of Nokia ringtones were composed in-house or by contractors, occasionally library music was licensed from Sound Ideas and later UPM, mostly jazz or Latin music. Several sound effects were also licensed from Sound Ideas too, but I won't list these here since they're not music.
These ringtones include:
Sound Ideas: Acclaim, Big band, Fiesta, High society, Mambo, Paraiso, Reflective, Slick/Smooth, Trim
UPM: Closing/Shakers, Solo
Nokia also licensed some library music as preloaded music tracks too, probably from UPM. Some of their ringtones were also based on Big Fish Audio demos too, though that doesn't really count as library music.
Vodafone:Vodafone's MIDI ringtones are probably original compositions, though their later audio ringtones seem to have been licensed from UPM too, such as
Smokin' Funk and Snoogle. The titles were not changed from the original tracks.
Alcatel:Most of Alcatel's ringtones were created by a guy credited as "Donald Kepple", and many were plagiarised from other manufacturers (especially Nokia) where the melodies or chords were changed to dodge copyright. However, one of their Android ringtones named Poltergeist was licensed from royalty free music site DigitalJuice. Others may have originated from there too, but I'm not sure.
