Songwriters Collaborate by File-Sharing

Telephono works like a musical chain letter: One musician e-mails a tune to another, who adds to it and passes it on. The next musician does the same. Eventually, a song is created. The idea is "inspired by the classic children’s game 'Telephone,'" says creator David Matysiak. People can change "anything or everything. Or nothing at all."

Matysiak says he cooked up the online service after collaborating with the same band for 10 years. Every tune has a different journey; one of his ended up in Italy, where a musician added trumpet and sounds of waves crashing. It hasn't come back yet. Matysiak says he's still waiting "for that one song" that returns exactly the way he wrote it. (More telephono stories.)