Ringtone melodies (chaku-mero) are the music played when a phone rings. Early mobile phones could only produce simple electronic tones, but around 1996 handsets appeared that let owners enter a melody of their own choosing. Those first melodies were monophonic, playing one note at a time, and as mobile data services such as i-mode spread, downloading ringtones grew into a substantial business.
Sound quality improved in stages, from monophonic tones to 4-, 16-, and 40-voice polyphony. In 2002 au launched "chaku-uta", which played the original vocal recording, and in 2004 "chaku-uta full" began delivering complete songs for a few hundred yen each. Both were distributed to mobile handsets and grew as a market separate from music sold for personal computers.
As smartphones spread, the ringtone business contracted. Subscription streaming became the mainstream way to listen to music, so buying ringtones one song at a time fell out of habit. On smartphones as of 2026, people generally either keep one of the tones preinstalled on the handset or point the ringtone setting at a music file they already have.
Choosing different tones still helps with identifying who is calling. If family members and business contacts are saved in the address book with their own ringtones, one ring is enough to tell whether the caller is someone already registered. That trick breaks down in manner mode, where no ringtone sounds at all. And when a site offering free ringtones asks for membership registration or broad permissions, check who operates it before handing over a phone number or contact list.
Culturally, ringtones turned the phone into a tool for self-expression. Picking a ringtone was a statement of individuality, continuing the wordplay culture of the pager as part of a longer tradition of expressing oneself through a mobile device. See the history of telephone devices for how mobile phone culture changed over time.