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Prerequisites

Before proceeding, make sure the following are true: 

• You have the latest version of iTunes (from iLife ’08) and it is currently patched. If you bought your Mac after about August of 2007 and keep your software up to date, then you’ll qualify. If you don’t have Garageband, check out this method for creating ringtones.
• You must use music that is not inhibited by DRM. If you have iTunes Plus music from iTunes, or MP3 files from Amazon.com or eMusic.com, or of course any files you’ve ripped from your own CDs, these all qualify. 

OK, with those out of the way let’s make a ringtone…

1. Launch Garageband

If you’ve never run Garageband before, tell it you want to make a new file and just take all the defaults for that file (you don’t really use them for the ringtone anyway).

Once opened, the screen will look like the picture below. Don’t worry about the Grand Piano there, you don’t need to do anything with it. 

2. Add a song

Click the Media button in the lower-right corner.

You’ll get a slide out window with which to navigate your entire iTunes library. Just find the song you want and drag it to the main GB window. Below you can see I chose the song Take Your Medicine.

Now that the song is in place, you can click the Media button again to hide it so you have more room to work. 

3. Select a song section

First, click the Cycle Region button to turn on the cycle feature.

You will see the yellow cycle region at the very top of the screen. (The region you create is what will become the ringtone). 

Now comes the fun part. Just drag the beginning and ending points of the cycle region to correspond to where you want the ringtone to begin and end. Hit the space bar and it will repeatedly play from the start of the region to the end. Continue adjusting the start/end points until you have the sound you want. Below you can see I’ve chosen a short section from the very end of the song.

Keep in mind there is a maximum of 40 seconds that can be used for a ringtone. Most of the time you’ll pick a section that will sound good when it repeats (i.e., rings multiple times on your phone), so the 40-second limit will not be an issue. However, if you’re picking a large section and are concerned that you may be butting up against the limit, you can determine the length using the Time display by clicking the up arrow at the bottom of GB.

By default (above) the display shows Measures. But click the arrow once and the display shows Time.

With the time displayed, physically drag the play head to the beginning of the yellow cycle region, and then to the end, noting the time in each case. You can determine the duration from that.

4. Create the ringtone

This is the easiest part. Once you like the section you’ve defined, just select Send Ringtone to iTunes from the Share menu.

GB will do all the work, and even open iTunes and play your newly created masterpiece.

In iTunes, the ringtone will be named “My Song” and the artist/album will be listed as your user name; you’ll probably want to change those as you would any other iTunes song, as I’ve done here.

5. Sync your iPhone

That’s it! Once synced, you can use your new ringtone. Meanwhile, quit GB. It’ll ask if you want to save the file, say no because the file has served its purpose. 

It’s easy. No, really.

While it may have taken a while to explain this, believe me it’s really very easy stuff. Do it once and you’ll have the hang of it, and want to create a boatload of ringtones.

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To create custom ringtones using only iTunes:

1. Right click on the song you are going to make into a ringer and select “Get Info.”
2. Go to the options tab and go down to the “Start Time” and “Stop Time” check boxes. Check both boxes and input the time you want your ringer to start/stop. The ringer has to be 30 seconds or less. Click OK when you’re done.
3. Right click on your newly “clipped” song and select “Convert Selection to AAC.” The song will be re-encoded using the start and stop times determined (If your menu item does not read “Convert Selection to AAC” and reads “Convert Slection to MP3″ (or some other format) please go to iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > Importing and change the “Import Using” drop down menu to “AAC Encoder”).



4. After the song is done encoding navigate to your iTunes Music folder, locate your song, and drag it to your desktop. After the song is on your desktop go back to iTunes and delete the clipped version from you iTunes library (It won’t delete it from your desktop, it will only remove it from iTunes).
5. Go back the song on your desktop and right click on your song and chose “Get info.” Go to the name and extension section and change the extension from .m4a to .m4r (or you can just change the extension right from your desktop)
6. After the extension is changed simply double click on the file to add it to your iTunes library under the ringtones section. Sync your phone with iTunes and you’re done!

Remember to go back into iTunes and uncheck your custom start and stop times for the original version of your song.

Other Ringtone Posts

Here are a few other posts about creating ringtones for your iPhone that you might find interesting.

• How-To: Create iPhone Ringtones in Garageband
• Create Your Own Ringtones With YouTones iPhone Ringtone Creator
• Ambrosia releases iToner 1.0.7 offers customized ringtones for iPhone; No ringtone fee

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In short, Apple and AT&T, stop being jerks about ringtones. Sure, I get that we as a society probably don’t want to hear an individual’s bad chop job of Ice Ice Baby. While I appreciate your efforts to protect ourselves from ourselves we are still in the land of the free. As in freedom to do what we want within the laws that bind us. This case, however is a blatant attempt at capitalist extremism. Gruber says it best:

“Yes, this might have further antagonized Apple’s already-contentious relationship with the music labels (and with the entertainment media conglomerates in general; cf. NBC), but the reason these relationships are rocky is that the executives running these companies are stubborn fools who are only willing to consider ways to keep things the way they were, and who hold their own customers in utter contempt. You can’t reason with the masterminds behind “ringles”.”

Guys, you’ve been blazing the trail and getting these old hats to see the future the way we want it. Why ruin the song with this dance? It seems like this took a significant more amount of logistics and infrastructure to put out ring tones than needed. So, let us do what we want with what we already have. If I feel like it is worth a buck I can just buy the ring tone. Take my dollar in that case, otherwise let me enjoy what those dollars already provided me.

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What does it in for me, however, is that Apple is pushing their ringtone product at me when I don’t even own an iPhone.

In the iTunes store for every album that has any ringtones available for its songs it shows the little bell next to the songs I could purchase as a ringtone as well as an entire section in the sidebar dedicated to ringtones.

You could call it cross selling/marketing but I call it overcrowding and unnecessary. It wastes valuable screen space pushing a product I have absolutely no possible way of even using.

Maybe Apple is doing it in the hopes that some poor soul without an iPhone will accidentally purchase it thinking they can use it or maybe the marketing guru’s think a few 30 second loops of a song will make me buy an iPhone. I’m not sure. I am sure that I’d like a Preference option to turn off any and all traces of ringtones in the store though.

If they’re really looking to cross sell some things, maybe a more useful feature would be suggesting the movies and TV shows that certain songs by that artist include.

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Ringtones

The first announcement was in regards to a new Ringtones feature being made available to iPhone users. Some 500,000 songs will be available to use in the custom Ringtones builder application. To create a ringtone out of one of the 500k available songs will cost an additional 99 cents on top of the 99 cents it costs for the song itself.

You can assign different custom rings to different people. Steve assigned Aretha Franklin’s Respect to his wife. Cute.

The Ringtones builder will be available in a new version of iTunes releasing today.

iPod Shuffle

The refreshed iPod Shuffles were probably the most unexciting update of the day.

All the colors were given a makeover with more pastel tints to the colors as well as the addition of a (RED) shuffle.

Cost is the same as before at $79 for 1GB.

iPod Nano

The rumors about a short, squashed iPod Nano turned out to be true.

The new Nano has a 2-inch diagonal measurement and a 320×240 pixel screen. It comes in black, silver, blue, green, and (RED). The colored versions are only available at the more expensive price point.

It has a battery life of 25 hours for audio 5 hours for video playback…yes, video.

$149 for 4GB and $199 for 8GB and wider range of colors. Ships today.

iPod Classic

The original iPod is now called “iPod Classic,” which makes sense considering there are so many different iPod versions available.

They’ve jacked the storage up significantly with the starting storage amount being 80GB. They’ve also added a massive 160GB version to the mix. Both are thinner that the previous full-size iPod.

The battery life of the 80GB model is 25 hours of music and 5 hours of video while the 160GB is 40 hours of music and 7 hours of video.

The 80GB is now $249 and the 160GB is $349. It is shipping today.

iPod Touch

The biggest announcement of the day is the new addition to the iPod line called iPod Touch.

The iPod Touch is almost identical in design to the iPhone and has many of the features that the iPhone does (minus the obvious calling capability).

Yes, the iPod Touch has ditched the clickwheel in favor of a touch screen. Major features of the iPod Touch are Calendar, Contacts, Safari, and YouTube integration. Which brings us to the next point. To run Safari and YouTube you’d need some sort of connection capability. The iPod Touch has Wi-Fi making it the first iPod with wireless technology.

The iPod Touch has a battery life of 22 hours for music and 5 hours for video.

There will be an 8GB ($299) and 16GB ($399) version available and shipping by the end of the month.

iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store

Apple has now created an iTunes Wi-Fi music store for the iPod Touch and iPhone that lets you browse and purchase music through an iTunes interface optimized for smaller screens. It has the same features and songs available in the regular iTunes store…just a slimmer interface.

Mixed in with this announcement was a new partnership with Starbucks.

When you’re in or near a participating Starbucks store you’ll be able to find out what the song playing in the shop is and purchase it on the spot including the previous 10 songs played in the store.

The feature is rolling out in Seattle and NY in October with other stores being adding over the next 2 years (assuming this is successful).

iPhone Price Changes

Steve commented about how Apple wants to be even more aggressive with their iPhone sales to which he announced that the 8GB iPhone has been given a $200 price drop and is now available for $399.

Even more surprising was that the 4GB iPhone has now been completely dropped from Apple’s product line. Shortest. Life span. Ever.

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It requires quite a bit of hackery and, if you’re not careful, could very well kill off your iPhone altogether.

I honestly don’t think I’d want to risk that considering it costs a small fortune to purchase an iPhone in the first place.

If anything, it’s a pretty good read just to learn more about the inner workings of of the iPhone (atleast from a software standpoint).

The usual disclaimers apply. It’s your own fault if you break it. :)

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