What chances do bands of the past have to still be en vogue? Well, there are actually plenty of options available. The usual stuff, like concerts, tours, commercials have been ways of promoting music since, say, The Beatles. But the digital era in which we live started to propose new alternatives. One of the most successful appears to be using music as ringtones for mobile phones.

Departing from this criterion, we might even divide music artists into three categories. First, there are the Robbie Williams-kind of musicians, the ones that promote themselves with technical innovations in the music format. Then, there are the ones that simply accept it as a fatality and naturally conform to it. Third, there are these bands or singers, especially among the older ones, who simply refuse to accept that a mobile phone is a suitable device to support their much-worked-upon sounds.

Lately though, even members of this third category started to give up their stubbornness as to what concerns the issue and accept to give their tracks to mobile companies (telecom partners such as Vodafone or Sprint). A paradigmatic example would be The Beatles. Probably following more or less their model, the four ABBA decided to take this path too.

ABBA have finally agreed to make available their music in ringtones format. The one thing they wanted to make sure about was that the ringtones would be digitized versions of the band's master recording rather than synthesized.
Working with executives at Universal Music Sweden and Universal Music Mobile, the group's primary songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus have personally approved the distribution of their hits as cellular ring signals.

So fans of the famous Swedish 70s group have good reasons to be happy! Wouldn't you like that when your boss calls on your mobile, you'd have the chance of hearing "Money money money, should be funny in a rich men's world"? Or that when your lover calls you, you listen to "so thank you for the music, for giving it to me"?...