You may remember that I got a snazzy BlackBerry Pearl week before last. One of the features it has that my old one didn't is that it plays mp3s.

With my trusty Ipod already surgically joined to my hip, I don't really need my phone to play mp3s. But, I found myself loading a few up specifically to use as ringtones.

Ringtones have long been a point of wrangling in our shop. We initially planned to offer free ringtones as a service for local bands and post them on the band pages on our site. We went through some serious gymnastics to figure out how to produce decent polyphonic ringtones from mp3s, and finally cracked the code. For about a year now, my old, non-mp3 BlackBerry has driven my colleagues and my wife crazy as it blares the Old 97's "Timebomb."

The trouble was the distribution mode -- getting the tones to the phones of the various providers, including getting them to phones that don't connect directly to a computer. That involves an over-air download, which we figured out how to do too -- it just was too costly in terms of developer time in the short term.

I only go through all that rigamarole to point out the complexity of the business of getting ringtones made and onto phones. And to contrast it with the following:

1. Drag and drop mp3 to phone.

2. Click song.

3. Highlight "set as phone tune."

Now BlackBerry has never been known as a leader in multimedia. My wife's new Motorola plays mp3s, as did most of the other phones I saw in the store. So while most phones may not yet have mp3 capabilies, many do. And with the half-life of a cell phone down to about a year, it won't be long.

So, for those companies who advertise incessantly on late-night TV selling ringtones of the hottest hip-hop stars, for companies like local venture GroupieTunes, and for anyone else who is making a business selling ringtones, I predict a bleak future. I imagine that in the 2006 episode of I Love the Aughties, there will be lots of laughing over the year we bought lots of song fragments for double the price of the actual song. But I don't see it making it to 2007.

NB: After a year, I'm giving "Timebomb" a rest. My current ringtone is Southern Culture on the Skids' "Banana Pudding." I have no clue why, other than that it makes me smile. I might change it again tonight -- it'll only take me five seconds and won't cost a nickel.