iTunes now serving-up Ringtones
By Thomas Ricker 
posted September 11th 2007 2:16AM
posted September 11th 2007 2:16AM
[Thanks, Pinsleric, Michael F. and everyone who sent this in]
posted September 11th 2007 2:16AM
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Is it common to use songs as ringtones in the US? I use to make fun of everyone who has a song as ringtone over here in Germany, and that's not only because everyone uses David Hasselhoff-Songs.
I prefer vibration alarm. Wait, has the iPhone vibration?
I mean I agree that's its stupid to pay for ringtones but thats only if you know how to get custom free one's on your cellphone. If we look at this from a legal and cell phone view. Sprint, Verizon, T-mobile, and AT&T all charge more for ringtones plus they don't have half the catalog of Itunes. So I think its cool to buy ringtones if you computer illiterate and can't follow one of the ways to create your own custom ringtones on the Iphone, but if you like me you been adding ringtones to your Iphone for weeks now. This is old
http://howtobefly.com
iToner 15 dollars + garadge band free with my macbook = priceless ringtones. Im sure the community will come together and make a hack. Its very well certain.
Can't wait to buy that... NOT!
Are you guys serious?
I dont know about you, but my provider charges anywhere from $3-$6 for a ringtone, depending on quality. Plus download fees.
I would GLADLY pay ~$2 for a great mp3 quality ringtone.
Waaaah, fucking waaaah.
I think that the whole stupid idea is silly and that anyone pays for them. BUT THEY DO.... So Apple wants to get in on this, they're a business you dopes get used to it. One day you'll all graduate kindergarten and need to support yourselves, and maybe just maybe you'll be a business owner too, like Jobs, Gates and that silly ass monkey boy Ballmer...
Why is everyone acting so surprised. Apple established a monopoly with its iTunes ecosystem. Now they rip benefits. What do you guys expect? Apple is better than that? Just wait, the worst is yet to come.
I wasted 10 minutes browsing the music store and didn't find any ringtones to purchase. I'm happy rolling my own.
It's always touching to see applets line up to blindly support a corporation which deliberately emasculates a product in order to make more money. Think about it- a corporation. I particularly love the "it's the phone companies ... apple is innocent," never accepting the fact other carriers' phones seem to be able to do what the iPhone cannot.
Then there's the price thing ... "this isn't so bad. In Botswana, they charge 3 times as much. If you can't afford to pay an extra dollar per song (for a ridiculously limited subset of songs you might already have), then you're a weenie." Please.
Y'all remind me of the overly earnest and not-too-bright kids in school who always followed the rules. When I buy music ... it's mine. I don't care what any music company says, after the fact. I don't care what Apple says, in order to cover it's ass. This insistence on denying buyer's rights for online music purchases by saddling tracks with play restrictions and DRM is a relatively new development-meant to hold back change in distribution channels. It's inimically hostile to both technology and consumers.
And you applets blindly defend corporate collusion ... saying it's the way of the world. Go ahead and "think the same." Corporations love your brand of consumerism. Hell, they may even give you a gold star.
Songs are appearing and disappearing. A bunch of Enya tracks have been added, while some Dire Straits songs that were there this morning are now no longer available as ringtones.
Yeah yeah, my musical taste sucks.
Holy crap! My WiMo phone is going to be hanging around for a while with it's cut and paste ringtones. I just finished rebuilding about 700MB of my music library after i-tunes rendered it useless. All I wanted to do was help my Grandma put some songs on her i-pod. Thanks a lot Apple, you've created a MS fanboy for life!!!
paying for ringtones?!? hahaha
If you dont want to pay, and you already own the song, or you dont have an iphone, just drag the song to garage band and cut out a 15 second piece and load it to your phone with blue tooth or what ever. it works great
So stupid.. This is the only Apple product I own, and now.. will ever own. People, please don't pay Apple to stretch our a-holes so they can fit more in.
don't most people buy their ringtones on their phone when they are out somewhere? If you cant buy ringtones from wiTMS and cut them yourself using some app on the iphone it's going to be a failure. if i'm at my computer why wouldn't i just use a hack to do it? If wiTMS supports ringtone purchasing on the iphone then i think people will gladly pay $1.98
Most of you do understand that since the iPhone cannot download ringtones OTA through AT&T Wireless's ringtone "store", that the revenue generated by ringtones (for AT&T) has to come through other means, don't you? At $1.98 a pop through iTunes, it is a bit cheaper than the $2.49 per ringtone that AT&T Wireless currently charges.
I'm not so daffy that I believe Apple should give ringtones away for free... But they should let those of us out here savvy enough to investigate hacks and perform them the freedom to do with our $600 phone as we like.
What I want to know is, lets say we knowledge-seekers purchase a proper ringtone as a control, to examine how it appears in our OS... After we edit it once and pay our 2nd $.99 is that the end of it? Or will we be able to use a different portion of the song @ a later time if the portion we first decided on amounts to a poor ringtone once it is transferred to the iphone?
And does anyone out there think the fiddling about with the file extensions in this workaround has even a remote potential to brick the mobile? Maybe a stupid question, but I am flat broke and out on my ass if I demolish my baby...
When does the iphone get the update for wifi itunes?
HEY, ever hear of a little part of the government called the RIAA? Yeah, piracy police? They require separate licensing for a ringtone. I'm not saying I'm going to pay for ringtones, but thats what the government REQUIRES. Stop bitching about how bad Apple is when your OWN phone charges more for a legal ringtone! Meanwhile, I'm going to use a painless free download and put songs on my iPhone for free.
Let me put it simply:
ILLEGALLY: I have used both, and making free ringtones is just as easy on my iPhone as on other phones I've had in the past.
LEGALLY: Apple is giving you the best deal they are legally allowed to, by giving you a FULL song and a ringtone of the exact part of the song you want.
VERDICT: Quit your bitching.
what the hell! Apple acts as if this is not a rip off. Why would I pay $1.98 for a ringtone when songs cost 99 cents. First Apple rips me off with these lame and unusually high taxes on songs now this. Seriously this is lamer then when they bill me 13 bucks for a $9.99 album. It's like Apple just wants you to make your own ring tones like that oh so infamous hack.
I'm begining to believe there are people in this world who just live to complain, bitch, gripe, snivel, moan and whine. Most of them are oddly localized to Engadget and their favorite topic of choice to bitch about is anything Apple or iPhone related. They go to bed at night thinking of different, new, and unique ways to decry Apple and wake up every morning poised to hit Engadget.com ready for a full day of whining, bitching and crying.
It never occured to any of you whioners that Apple isn't doing anything new or illegal. They are doing the samething every other company does but somehow when Apple does it, it is particularly horrible. Sprint, T Moble, and Verizon ALL charge for ringtones. Sprint charges up to $4.99 for one ringtone which eventually expires. I don't see any of you making a peep about that. Yet Apple does it, and you people are ready to storm 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino with pitch forks and torches.
I'd swear it was the end of the world the way some of you carry on about Apple's extremely industry standard practices.
Some of you are bandwagon haters. You open the topic, see most people bitching, and promptly decide you need to bitch too. You may not even have a good reason but you just bitch because 14 people before you decided to bitch. You can tell the bandwagon haters because their comments add nothing new it basically mirrors everything the previous haters wrote.
You people will never ever be happy with Apple, you just hate them for no reason. Apple could find the cure to cancer and you would still bitch. It gets to the point where you bitch so much you lose credibility. It doesn't seem like any of you have a legitimate gripe it just seems like you lovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvve to BITCH!!!!
"They are doing the samething every other company does but somehow when Apple does it, it is particularly horrible. Sprint, T Moble, and Verizon ALL charge for ringtones."
Sprint, T Moble, and Verizon are all carriers. They do not design and manufacture phones. They have every right to charge you for a service available on their network.
Apple is a phone manufacturer and provides a music and video distribution method via iTunes. They have every right to charge users who wish to receive music or videos from iTunes.
The reason people are pissed: Apple purposely neutered the iPhone to prevent the owners (Yes... you own the iPhone. You paid full price.) from easily transferring a music file onto the phone and use it as a ringtone. This is totally ridiculous and anti-consumer considering numerous other manufacturers allow this feature for free (Motorola, HTC, Nokia).
Ringtone tab popped up today!
...in the itunes library