A ringtone becomes a bumper sticker of sorts. "There are only a few things that allow us a huge menu of choices of ways to express ourselves - the way we dress, the way we wear our hair and the bumper stickers on our cars are a few. "I suppose this was absolutely inevitable," said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. Sneed's friend Alisha Lewis, 18, said she recently used her cell phone to record an African drum performance at a pageant for UF's African Students Union, and has used the recording as her ringtone. The Center for Biological Diversity offers a host of free ringtones featuring the calls of endangered animals, from the howl of a Mexican gray wolf to the squawk of a blue-throated macaw. ![]() ![]() The ringtone explosion isn't limited to popular music. The Recording Industry Association of America now awards ringtones its traditional gold and platinum designations for sales milestones, and Billboard Music charts the most downloaded ringtones with a top 40 list. The $2.50 Sneed spent to download the offending Outkast ringtone represents a small piece of a multibillion-dollar global market that is forming its own niche in the music industry and creating a host of new etiquette dilemmas. ![]() I got up and went to the bathroom, and was like, 'Well, I can't go back in there.' " "And it wasn't even during a time when the pastor was talking - it was during prayer. "It was this really loud, obnoxious Outkast song, with these horns and these drums," said Sneed, 19, a University of Florida freshman. Jessica Sneed was in church when her cell phone rang unexpectedly, blaring a two-second loop of a raucous hip-hop song for the whole congregation to hear.
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