I’m officially in shock.

My wonderfully high-tech cell phone lacks a “normal” ringtone. You can use something that sounds like a shite rendition of an old Chemical Brothers track, a “hip-hop” beat or something that belongs in a bad Eurotrash club. I can’t get a normal “ring ring” sound; it wasn’t offered on my phone. I am guilty of all I will further outline below, yet I picked a song-based track on something so overused and already ripped apart, that I didn’t really have any guilt concerning my selection. My tone is Blur’s ‘Song 2′ (when I remember to turn on the ringer) which has been used in commercials, advertisement and so many things under the sun. And it just kind of cracks me up to hear the “woo-HOO.”

Anyway, I perused AT&T’s wonderful ringtone selection. The possibility of something decent was not bright when my featured “suggestions” were a heinous list topped by Carrie Underwood. So I tried to search for Mansun, being that their first album has been stuck in my head for a couple of days. No such luck. However, I was pretty darn intrigued as to how many “non-mainstream” ringtones I could find.

It does beg the question: are indie bands selling out and trying to be more mainstream by offering up their songs to be bastardized as ringtones, or is AT&T trying to cater to the “hipster” crowd by presenting clips from “hipster” bands?

Well, I found that The Shins, Nada Surf, Blur, The Decemberists, Kate Nash and Oasis have more than one ringtone. Of course, Colplay does too. In my opinion, this lot falls into the more “mainstream” category.

Then I branched out a little; Belle and Sebastian, Sons and Daughters [audible gasp], Longwave (maybe not as “indie” as I’d thought…), Band of Horses (but only the moderately big singles), Mates of State and finally ELBOW [gasp #2] have ringtones available for purchase.

Luckily, or maybe sadly, I did not find anything by Mansun, Yeasayer, Suede (well, maybe, but I’m not sure as it was a horrible Muzak rendition of…something) The Submarines or The Twilight Sad.

I don’t know how I feel about all this. Has the drop in physical CD sales and the reliance on digital downloads made it more profitable to sell tracks as ringtones? It seems to pervert the whole idea of song composition and music itself; one is taking a brief cut from a song and using it to show off to the world how “cool” he or she is, or how “on top” of the latest music scene he or she can be. It’s so pretentious and irritating and part of this “look at me” culture, where people try so hard to be “different” yet resort to mainstream methods of behaviour to do so. Dude, it’s really not cool to be blasting Sons and Daughters as a ringtone. By the same token, if you’re like me and receive a phone without a basic ringing sound, what else are you supposed to do? Use the hideous electronic manipulations that pass as “tunes” and be completely embarrassed? It almost seems if there’s a conspiracy afoot, between phone companies, cell phone providers and record labels, forcing you to shell out $2.50 to not sound like a total jackass when your phone rings in public, or come across as “cool” to a packed subway car.

That being said, there’s always the vibrate option, sans hideous or overpriced ringtone.