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In the late 1990s and early 2000s, one sound dominated cafes, airports, malls, and even boardrooms. If a mobile phone rang, it was almost guaranteed to be playing one particular, seemingly inescapable melody. Long before you could use pop songs as your ringtone, you were stuck with whatever factory-loaded ringtones came with your phone, and one iconic option from Nokia became instantly recognizable across the world.
Much like other modern technologies that are older than you think, this legendary bit of music has surprisingly old roots. It was written nearly a century before it ever showed up on cell phones. Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega wrote a piece for solo classical guitar called “Gran Vals” in 1902. Buried within this enchanting waltz, 13 bars in, is the four-bar phrase that became Nokia’s famous ringtone. Tárrega’s piece is also said to have been inspired by a short phrase in Frédéric Chopin’s “Grande Valse Brillante” for piano. And by Nokia picking up this catchy phrase a century later, it inadvertently created the most recognizable ringtone in consumer tech history.
From background music to iconic brand identity
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The leap from sheet music to silicon beeps started in the early ’90s. Nokia needed background music for a TV ad promoting its new 1011 phone. Rather than hiring an artist to compose new music for the jingle, Nokia used a recording of “Gran Vals,” which was free to use since the piece was in the public domain, and dropped a brief snippet into the background of the commercial. Audiences didn’t immediately obsess over the tune, but Nokia’s leaders saw potential in the catchy hook. In 1993, executives Anssi Vanjoki and Lauri Kivinen picked out the short phrase that would become the ringtone.
The real turning point came two years later with the launch of the Nokia 2110 phone. This pocket-sized phone offered a feature that was impressive for the time: The ability to actually change the default incoming call ringtone. Among the options was Nokia’s digitized version of “Gran Vals,” listed simply as “Ringtone Type 7.”
The bouncy, classical tune quickly caught on. As Nokia pumped out millions of new phones, it kept the ringtone on board and, in 1997, gave it an official name, “Grande Valse,” a nod to the original piece. The following year, it was renamed the “Nokia Tune,” and the branding was cemented. It went on to ring out from later hits like the 3310, one of the best Nokia phones of all time, according to users.
Its cultural peak and lasting tech legacy
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During the peak of the feature phone era, those few seconds of classical guitar were flat-out inescapable. In 2009, it was estimated that the Nokia Tune was played around 1.8 billion times a day worldwide, or roughly 20,000 times per second. It evolved from a simple phone feature into a pop culture fixture, showing up in a recurring sketch on the British prank show “Trigger Happy TV,” in the demo of Green Day’s “Homecoming (Nobody Likes You),” and even in Drake’s 2025 track “Nokia.” Pretty much everyone everywhere recognized that sound and knew what it meant.
As technology evolved, people eventually moved away from default ringtones in favor of setting their own custom sounds, downloading hit songs to serve as their personalized ringtones. Slowly but surely, that ubiquitous classical waltz faded from public spaces as Nokia lost its viselike grip on the cellphone market. But even though the famous ringtone faded from everyday life, it certainly left its mark. There’s no way Tárrega (or Chopin, who inspired him) could have predicted that a short phrase of guitar music would become arguably one of the most played melodies in human history. That’s certainly something to call your friends up and talk about.