Barry Dobson

Unfortunately Apple decided they would like to charge for people to be able to download ringtones for songs they already bought. Luckily there is a way you can use iTunes to get ringtones from any MP3 file for free, here’s how.

1. Open iTunes and find the song you wish to make a ringtone out of.
2. Play the song in iTunes. Take a note of the start and finish times of the section of the song you wish to use. (E.G. Maybe you want an instrumental section of a song that starts at 2:34 and ends at 2:51)
3. Right click on the song in iTunes. Click “Get Info”. Find the tab that contains the options for start time and end time. Tick these two options and fill in the start and end time that you noted down from step 2 (I think this can get do milliseconds if you need to be precise). Click OK to close the dialogue.
4. Now go into the iTunes preferences. On the first tab, click on “Import Settings”. Make sure the encoder is set to AAC (You can change this back to MP3 once this process is finished, but for creating ringtones it should be AAC). Close the preferences screen.
5. Right click on the song again that you wish to make the ringtone from and select the copy to AAC option. After a pause you will notice a new song has appeared below the one you chose. It will have the same name/artist but it’s length will reflect that of the options you set in step 3. Right click the original song and un-tick the start and end time options.
6. Right click the new version of the song and select to view in explorer copy the song to your desktop. Back in iTunes you can now remove the new song your library (select to move file to recycle bin, we don’t need this cluttering up your library).
7. Once you have the new song file on your desktop you need to change the file extension. If you can’t see the file extension you need to enable it in folder properties. (In explorer select Tools > Folder options. In the View tab find the tick box for “Hide extensions for known file types” un-tick it. Select ok, you should now see the file extension, m4a, in this case).
8. You need to change the extension from m4a to m4r. When you do this you will notice the icon change and it will now say ringtone.
9. Drag the file back into iTunes. You will now see the ringtone option in your library and the new ringtone will be within that.
10. Plug in your iPhone. In the sync options select to sync ringtones. When you perform a sync your ringtones will be sent to your iPhone. In the settings in your iPhone you will now have the option of selecting your new ringtone.

The process seems a bit complicated and painful, but after you have done it a couple of times it will only take a minute to create custom ringtones from any MP3 file in your library, and it’s free.

If you prefer to use an editor like Sony Sound Forge for you editing needs (in order to play around with samples and get better accuracy when cropping) you can still go ahead and use it. Simply create your file in the editor and export it. Add it to your iTunes library and follow the instructions from step 4.

Hope this helps.