Mobile media is enjoying a bumper year in 2010, even as it has made a good showing for itself in general over the last several years. Since ringtones first hit the scene with the extremely basic “ringing bell” emulation they provided for the earliest mobile phones, mobile media has been in step with mobile evolution. Mobile media grew as mobile phones did, expanding in sophistication, quality and managing to pack in more for the price as it ebbed and flowed with the market tide. Now, mobile media enjoys a solid following despite considerable uncertainty amid recovery from the economic troubles of the past year.
More than a market commodity on its own, however, mobile media has recently undergone a renaissance of sorts in Japan for entirely different reasons. The home of various innovations both fantastic and funny, Japan has managed to etch its name alongside ringtones in recent news by making waves about a new type of ringtone: the therapeutic ringtone. Certainly not the strangest thing Japan’s ever come up with, whether with regard to the mobile industry or ringtones or anything in general, but it’s definitely up there on the list of almost totally unexpected ways to expand on a powerful market item.
Matsumi Suzuki, head of the Japan Acoustic Laboratory subsidiary the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory, has pioneered a number of therapeutic ringtone initiatives. Proudest perhaps of his “synthetic mosquito noise tone” development, which created a high-pitched tone cast on a frequency audible only to younger ears and thus targeted to keep them from “congregating in parks at midnight,” Suzuki’s team has put together a number of interesting ringtones: a high-energy rhythm geared toward providing housewives [or, perhaps, men] with a burst of energy to do housework, and another woodland-noise-based one geared toward triggering skin improvements. While there’s a notable shortage of experimentation to verify the effectiveness of these tones, their popularity is clear from the number of downloads logged by Index, the Japanese mobile content provider tasked with selling the ringtones. One other such popular download is the Bowlingual app for the iPhone, which translates dog barks using a database of barks from dozens of canine species. Your mileage of suspension of disbelief may vary.
There are a variety of other therapeutic ringtones available. One variety endeavors to affect sleep, either by using a lullaby-ish tone to induce sleep or a lively dance track to prevent sleep. Another is a deterrent used best against crows that feast on Tokyo’s garbage in the dawn hours. One of the more interesting and potentially even noteworthy ones is Suzuki’s latest project, which is a ringtone timed to see release around the time of the Japanese hay fever season. Dubbed the Ohana Sukkiri Melody, the ringtone endeavors to play a sound at a pitch that helps discharge pollen from the users’ nasal cavity. More intriguingly, however, Suzuki claims to have also put together a hangover relief tone, made of “pulse-melodies” specifically selected for how well they were attuned to the body’s own “medical rhythms.”
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