Thomas Dolby

Thomas Dolby is a musician and the founder of Beatnik (previously Headspace) Inc., which created technologies such as miniBAE and mobileBAE. He founded the company in 1993 and served as the CEO, but stepped down in 2002 but remained on the board. Beatnik developed the RMF format, used to play music on websites after downloading a plug-in. He wrote some tracks for the Headspace Music Library, consisting of RMF music. He also wrote ringtones for Nokia during Beatnik's deal with the company, and later founded a company named Retro Ringtones.

Outside of his Beatnik work, he has had a long music career. He is best known for his new wave music in the 1980s, including hits such as "She Blinded Me with Science" and "Hyperactive!", both of which later received RMF versions. He has also composed for several video games and movies, some of which were done through Beatnik when it was known as Headspace.

Work with Beatnik
Dolby founded Beatnik in 1993, under the name Headspace. Along with Brian Salter, he was contracted to compose music for WebTV during 1995-96, and also contributed some tracks to the Headspace Music Library.

After the dot-com bubble, Beatnik's main client was Nokia. He assembled a team of composers to write ringtones for Nokia (which is known to include Salter, Gianluigi Di Constanzo and Steve Horner); while he wanted the company to utilize the RMF format, Nokia were not interested due to it being a proprietary format. He confirmed he wrote some ringtones for Nokia, although it is unknown if any of these were used. Many publications erroneously state that he created the polyphonic version of Nokia tune himself, but he has denied this and Ian Livingstone has confirmed himself as its arranger. However, he claims that Salter created this arrangement, and while Livingstone is confirmed to have created it, it is possible that Salter also created a candidate that never got used.

Dolby, along with his team, were unhappy with the sound quality of Nokia phones of the time, and hoped phones would eventually use RMF or truetone ringtones. He stepped down from his CEO position at Beatnik in early 2002, but remained on the board. He felt that Beatnik's business was no longer interesting to him and described it as "engineering". As well as founding the company Retro Ringtones, he would go on to host several ringtone composing seminars under the Headspace brand, where he provided lessons to professional musicians on how to write ringtones with miniBAE, as well as differences between various handsets and outlining potential copyright issues.

Work with Retro Ringtones
Following Dolby's departure from Beatnik, he went on to found a company called Retro Ringtones LLC later in the year. This offered hundreds of polyphonic and audio ringtones for commercial use, in various formats such as MIDI, RMF and Yamaha SMAF. He met software engineer Till Toenshoff at a ringtone composing seminar, who created a content management system for the company and eventually became co-owner of the company.

While he created hundreds of them, many of them were created by production partner Kevin Wooding or licensed from elsewhere. He does not appear to have written any of the ringtones from scratch, instead opting to edit library sound effects and making polyphonic arrangements of theme songs. In late 2003, the company produced 40 ringtones named Animal Ringtones for Orange, consisting of animal noise recordings. Donations were sent to WSPA each time one of these ringtones was purchased. In 2005, the company announced plans to launch their library to US carriers.

While the venture was successful, Dolby still intended to return to his music career, which he had been mostly absent from for over 12 years. As a result, the business was abandoned (not formally dissolved, though it got suspended years later), with Dolby taking the content and Toenshoff taking the technology for his own business, MMSguru. Following the end of the business, Dolby returned to his music career with a concert tour in 2006, and has not been involved with ringtones ever since.

Music tracks

 * Adelie Deflowered — Music (with Mitchel Foreman) & Arrangement
 * Algarve — Music & Arrangement
 * Entretiens(Debussy) — Arrangement (with Dan and Free)
 * Homage — Music & Arrangement
 * Hyperactive! — Music & Re-arrangement [NOTE: An RMF version of the song of the same name]
 * Lost In The Greek Islands — Music & Arrangement
 * Moss Beach — Music & Arrangement
 * Parisian Cafe — Music & Arrangement
 * Pavane — Arrangement (with Dan and Free)
 * She Blinded Me with Science — Music & Re-arrangement [NOTE: An RMF version of the song of the same name]
 * Sicilian Love Affair — Music & Arrangement
 * Sunlane — Music (with Brian Salter) & Arrangement (with Brian Salter)
 * Tavarua — Music & Arrangement
 * Trinidad — Music & Arrangement
 * Valley of the Mind's Eye — Music & Re-arrangement [NOTE: An RMF version of the song of the same name; also known as Valleys]

UI sounds

 * Fanfare-Mars — Music & Arrangement
 * Tell Me About Your Childhood — Voice