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Nobody is suggesting that ringtones are the future of rock‘n’roll, of course. But they are a window to the way musicians and distribution will increasingly work, together not apart, as technologies fuse and mobile phones become iPods and vice versa.

Even one of the people responsible for Crazy Frog is embarrassed, apparently, by what he has helped to mesh together . “I haven’t heard the Coldplay song, but I’m sure I’d rather listen to it,” says Erik Wernquist, a graphic artist who lives in Stockholm. He began creating the frog animation as an afternoon doodle three years ago after a friend pointed out this “very interesting sound” on the internet, the mimicry of Daniel Malmedahl, who lived in Gothenberg.

The combination of sound and a mad-eyed, leering, three-dimensional frog was the element which began the Crazy Frog propulsion. “I was only doing the animation for fun, for myself and my friends,” Wernquist says — an amusement for fellow designers, but nothing else. “Then it travelled around the internet.”

The 27-year-old professes himself more bemused than delighted by the success of his creature since licensing it for use by Jamster to help to sell Malmedahl’s engine imitation. And apologetic, especially to British television viewers currently being deluged with adverts for the ringtone superimposed over his grinning, motorbike-straddling creature.

“I understand that no matter how funny or cute, it must be dreadful to see it all the time. That’s not funny, that’s just truly annoying.”

Had he considered installing Crazy Frog? “No, never. Not once. I don’t think it’s funny.” He wishes that he had more control over the marketing, he says, or at least the amount of advertising being deployed. But Wernquist, who is likely to become a multimillionaire, lets slip that he arrives in Britain this weekend for talks on merchandising Crazy Frog. He probably has a lot of control, not least because he owns the image without which nothing much else works.

Film production companies are already making approaches, he admits. “I don’t want to go into that,” he says. “And, honestly, I don’t want to promise anything either.”

Wernquist speaks in a deep Swedish accent that makes him sound considerably older than his years. He has never met his creative partner. “Oh, I know what Daniel looks like. I have seen a photograph,” Wernquist says.

There are plenty of complaints — often from Germans — which the artist relays with laconic precision. “I get a lot of e-mails. People tell me I should be ashamed. They want me to explain why I did it and apologise.”

But Wernquist is annoyed, too. He thinks criticism of Crazy Frog as a piece of art, rather than a stupendously mind-boring noise, is misplaced. The complaints, and there have been several to the Advertising Standards Authority in Britain, concern Crazy Frog’s penis rather than ubiquity.

Still, despite no action from the ASA, Crazy Frog is generally covered up these days, at least in the ringtone commercials for TV.

The success of ringtones and their metamorphosis into musical sales is not surprising business analysts, who have been watching the steady advance since their arrival in 1998.

“The main reasons they’ve absolutely exploded in the past few years in the youth market is that they are a way of self-expression,” says Jessica Sandin, an analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. She specialises in the technologies being added to mobile phones. “It’s not about listening to tunes, but about telling people who you are. Music is the main form of self-expression for young people and, as mobiles became popular, they have found a way of linking the two.”

However, the growing technological sophistication of mobile phones, in a twist to this particular tail, may be what saves the music industry from imaginative Swedish teenagers.

“First ringtones were very simple, monophonic noises. Then they became slightly more complicated. But, either way, record companies got none of the action and anybody could create them. But now it is increasingly what they call ‘real music,’ which, of course, is fully produced and they generally do own that.”

Sandin says this means hope for record labels as the ringtone market settles down, probably to something worth £3.7 billion a year by 2010, and buyers demand, say, that Chris Martin, of Coldplay, announces an incoming call. “Before it was just the composer getting a royalty for the use of his music, there was nothing for the record company. But with real music, they’ll be in on the act much more, demanding proper royalties and so on.”

Meanwhile, as we prepare for the Summer of Crazy Frog, there may be some comfort for Chris Martin. Olivia Hibbins, 21, a recruitment consultant from Camberley, Surrey, is thinking of making a change among her 17 different ringtones. “I do have the frog, but I’m thinking of squashing it. I’d like to have the new Coldplay.”