I’ve had the same ringtone for as long as I’ve had a cell phone: the first 30 seconds of “The Mango Song” by Phish. It’s a fantastic ringtone – a solid, building riff with no lyrics. When my phone rings and my older brother is around, he tells me to let it go to voicemail just so we can listen to it. But it turns out that ringtones are, more often than not, a flavor of the week (or few weeks) item.

Nielsen RingScan compiles data every week on how many times each ringtone (i.e., song formatted as a ringtone) was downloaded. Billboard then uses the data to publish a weekly top 20 ringtones chart. I’ve pulled the top-downloaded song for each week since 2007 and graphed them as a timeseries.

LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” held the top spot for the longest period (25 weeks), followed by T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” (18 weeks). June through October of 2012 saw the most repetition/cycling of top ringtones, with “Call Me Maybe” (Carly Rae Jepsen), “Pontoon” (Little Big Town), and “Whistle” (Flo Rida) battling for the top spot. You can see the effect of Michael Jackson’s death in late-June, 2009, as “P.Y.T.” and “Thriller” top the ringtone chart in consecutive weeks in July, 2009.

Data source: http://www.billboard.com/charts/ringtones