Ancient Web: Jan Krohn’s Star Trek MIDI Page Kept WAP Ringtones Alive

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Jan Krohn's Star Trek music page does not ask visitors to stream a soundtrack. It offers the sort of small MIDI files people once downloaded, opened with whatever synthesizer their computer had, and sometimes turned into telephone ringtones.

Visit the Star Trek MIDI page.

Its navigation separates the original series and first six films, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, the 2009 film, and miscellaneous arrangements. The page also offers German-language navigation and a guestbook link.

A copyright line begins in 1996. The homepage's last-update date is August 8, 2016, while its latest MIDI addition is dated June 10, 2011. Those dates distinguish a long-running site from the recordings it originally set out to collect.

A phone version before smartphones took over

The site's most evocative feature is its WAP edition. Krohn says it was optimized for older mobile browsers with low bandwidth and could transfer MIDI files to phones as ringtones. WAP 2.0 support was the stated requirement, a reminder of the intermediate era between desktop-only web pages and modern smartphone applications.

An explanation of Vic Fontaine connects the site's name to the fictional lounge singer in Deep Space Nine, played by James Darren. A separate soundtrack reviews section discusses commercially released Star Trek recordings, while the MIDI directory provides an amateur format with much smaller files.

What survives is both the fan catalog and its delivery logic. Music was divided by television series, then linked individually. The user chose a file and a player; no embedded streaming service owned the listening experience.

A MIDI arrangement is not necessarily the original soundtrack audio, and the presence of a download link does not establish modern reuse rights. Some partner pages and the WAP host may no longer function as they once did.

The fansite has a distinct place in internet history because it documents how a recognizable television theme crossed between desktop web browsers, synthesizer sound banks, and early mobile devices.

Browse the original MIDI categories and the preserved soundtrack reviews.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.