Big ups to NPR’s Nate DiMeo for this awesome story explaining ringtones and the tech behind T-Pain, a rapper that I’d never heard of. Apparently he makes up for one in three of this week’s Billboard Top 10 tracks.
Listen to the piece here. (No, seriously. This piece works best as a piece of audio.)
The money (har) quotes:
“It’s his signature vocal sound, maybe more so than his actual voice, that has become one of the defining sounds in the radio this year. [SONG] It’s that sound. [SONG] That little robot sound when he says he’s going to buy you a drink.”
“Early historians of early radio speculate that one of the reason that singers like Bing Crosby became so popular was that their crooning tones sounded particularly good coming through the primitive speakers that people had in their living rooms. Today, some in the music industry think that T-Pain’s signature vocal sound, [CLIP] sounds particularly good through that tiny speaker in your pocket.”
