Comments on: iPhone owners can now buy ringtones for 99 cents, with some pain

iTunes now allows you to download ringtones and convert some of your existing songs to iPhone ringtones, assuming you don't use the widely circulated hacks to avoid the fee.

[Riquez-001]

who gets the 99c?

I'd be surprised if it was Apple getting the 99c for the ringtones. If
it were Apples choice I would expect the creation of ringtones to
work something like this - select any song, regardless of where it
came from, edit your 30 second clip, sync. No charge, its a free
feature of iTunes.
I highly suspect the 99c is going directly to the evil music labels,
because every other restrictive or costly service associated with
online music is directly attributable to them.

[jd29]

Condition imposed by the labels

"So if I'm right, it makes some sense for Apple to comply."

No, if you're right, which you probably are, Apple has no choice to
comply. Because if it's a condition imposed by the labels (which is
easy to imagine since the labels have made it clear that they want a
separate license and fee for ring tones), then Apple has to either
comply or not offer ring tones at all.

[declan00]

well...

You're right that Apple probably has no choice to comply about whether a song from the iTunes store can be used as a ringtone.

But what about a song legally transferred from a CD to iTunes? Apple doesn't legally have to bow to publishers' demands. But because of the iTunes Store relationship it makes sense to comply.

[cvaddison]

Unknown error

Has anyone seen the following error message:

Could not create ringtone. An unknown error occurred. (-42160). There was an error in iTunes Store. Please try again later.

[Thomas, David]

Surprisingly, it blows

Many, who have seen my prior posts, know I am an avid Apple
fan. However, this implementation is entirely un-Apple-like.

Buying ringtones?! Fine, I could have lived with that, as long as
I could have used my Garageband tracks, and used them as an
option. However, my current tracks will not convert to a ring
tone. I get the same, lame message written about in the article.

Bottom-line, it sucks. It is incongruous with what Apple offers
for solutions.

[Mr. Dogers2U]

Use iToner . . .

I used iToner to make up a repeating "24" ringtone in GarageBand
with slightly less pause and used the iToner Demo to make it
available for the iPhone.

[aka_tripleB]

Is it $0.99 per song?

Or is it $0.99 each time you want to make a different ringtone? Because from the video clip, it sounded like you you wanted to take a different part of a song, it you cost you another $0.99

[declan00]

Ringtones

Yep, it's $0.99 to make a new ringtone from a different part of the same song.

[mark46jones]

When?

Either you are so incompetent as a journalist/ blogger that you don't know it's the music labels that demand an extra fee for ringtones, or you just love to take a dig at Steve Jobs/Apple whenever you write about them. Which is it?

[declan00]

incompetent

Sometimes it's the readers who are incompetent.

The point I made regards a song legally transferred from a purchased CD to iTunes. Why can't I make that a ringtone? Copyright law isn't forcing Apple to bow to publishers' demands. But it did.

[EugeniaJ]

Stats used

Hi. I've used some stats from your article in numberpedia.org. Thank you.
You can check it out over here