Although iPhone owners have an easy time getting ringtones for their devices through Apple's iTunes store, the rest of the market can't easily find unique ringtones for their phones.
As someone who has suffered from that issue, I decided to take a look at several ringtone-creation services. Check them out to see if one will do what you need.
Make some ringtones
Audiko: I'm a stickler for good design on the Web. I think it's one of the most important elements of any site. And that's precisely why I didn't like Audiko at first glance. It's ugly. But once I actually used Audiko, my opinion changed quickly.
Audiko is like many of the services in this roundup. You can upload an MP3 file, pick your favorite 30-second span, and have the site create a ringtone for you. Once it's ready, you can have it sent to your phone. The site supports messages to phones on most major carriers. You can also opt to download the MP3 file to your computer. The whole process is free.
But the most compelling feature Audiko boasts is the ability to take a clip from a YouTube video. The site allows you to input the video's link. It then downloads it, analyzes the audio, and lets you choose which part of it you want to be your ringtone. It was a great feature. And like the other uploads on the site, it took no time to create the desired clip.
Audiko helps you find the portion of a song you want.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Mobile17: Mobile17's design is great. The amount of content you can access is outstanding. But unfortunately, it takes too long to get the ringtone.
When you first get to Mobile17, you have the option of downloading popular songs that users have recently turned into ringtones. To do so, the site links you to Amazon's MP3 Store. If you already have an MP3 that you want to turn into a ringtone, you can upload the track and pick the portion of the song you want. It's after that that Mobile17 breaks down a little.
To get your ringtone, Mobile17 requires you to register for the site. Once complete, you'll find that it takes a long time to get your ringtone sent to your phone. In fact, when I picked a clip in a song I wanted, the site told me that it would take 43 minutes to get it. That was the single issue with Mobile17, but it was a big one. At least the site is free and it works with your iPhone.
Mobile 17 will help you pick the clip you want.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
(Credit:
Vringo)
Vringo's video-ringtone service has been on our radar for well over a year, and the company's fun and unusual product is just getting better and better. The release of Vringo Mobile Application 2.0, with its full-featured client for Java phones, makes up for the slight disappointment of the online video-ringtone-creation studio.
Vringo capitalizes on the fever of personalized media by letting you create a video ringtone that others see when you call them--so long as they're Vringo users, too*. When another Vringo user calls you, you'll see the ringtone they selected for themselves.
Giving people power over the sounds and images that announce themselves to friends is a twist on the usual ringtone deal, and--so long as you don't have obnoxious taste in videos-- is a cute way to express yourself.
Vringo's newly updated mobile app, available this week exclusively from CNET Download.com, makes selecting new video ringtones from the video gallery much more visual; you'll be able to quickly see thumbnail images of a video and view a preview before downloading it to the phone. On phone models running the Java 8 operating system, both previews and videos run in higher resolution.
Be forewarned that if your data connection is less than optimal, loading video previews can take some time. We hope the next version will pick up the pace in that department.
Vringo has also fluffed up its buddy-management system, adding an all-new Share button on the main interface and a few more prompts to invite buddies into the fold. The Share button, in particular, serves existing users well and is another outlet for Vringo to recruit new clients. No Vringo app, no quirky video ringtone.
The rest of the app looks good, too, with straightforward navigation and the ability to immediately access, scroll through, and preview videos in your collection without resetting them. Our favorite extra? Being able to upload your own cell phone video to your video collection.
Pricing and availability
Vringo Mobile Application 2.0 is a free download, as are the contents of its video gallery. At some point, Vringo will adopt a freemium model and sell premium video content, which has been the plan since its early beta days.
Version 2.0 is currently available for Sony Ericsson phones, with compatibility for a greater number of Java-enabled models projected to join the ranks in about three weeks. At that time, a Symbian S60 build should also materialize. You're still able to get version 1 of Vringo's mobile app until then.
*If you're using a Sony Ericsson phone running the Java 7 operating system, you'll also see your own Vringo ringtone play back silently when you call a pal.
Video ringtone company Vringo has launched Vringo Studio, which gives user the capability to create their own video calling cards. Previously, users could only select from a pre-built library of videos on the site. With the new Vringo Studio, users can search for any video on YouTube, select a portion of it up to 30 seconds long, and send it to their phone, where it can become their outbound ringtone for other Vringo users.
The Vringo.com main site also supports the creation of custom video ringtones, and from sources other than YouTube, including videos on a user's computer. But it's very picky on what it will work with (video files have to be under 2MB, for example), and it has no clip editor.
Vringo Studio lets you create your own outbound video ringtones from YouTube clips.
As far as I can tell, Vringo Studio, which is in beta, is not linked to from the main Vringo site. That's just as well; I found the current version of the online app buggy.
Vringo's video support has always been cool, and the capability you now have to make your own videos rounds out the service. But it's the outbound ringtone capability that sets Vringo apart. Vringo lets you decide what your ringtone looks and sounds like to people receiving your call; most ringtone selectors just let you define what the ring is when people call you.
In order for Vringo to work, both caller and callee need the Vringo app on their phones (it's available for a lot of phone platforms--but not the iPhone). It can be a lot of fun, and it's a very viral app. If you want to join in so you can see how your friends' video ringtones when you call, you need the app. Vringo is forming deals with carriers to help with distribution (it recently got on the Turkish carrier Avea). The service is free at first, but there's a subscription fee after the trial.
Previously: Vringo. Video ringtones. Get it?
Vringo, a company that offers an application that can take video, images, and slideshows and turn those into a personalized ringtone experience, announced that it has signed an agreement with Turkish mobile carrier Avea, to bring the company's video ringtone service to Turkey. The deal puts in place the first carrier-led video ringtone subscription model in the world.
Vringo plans to launch its service on Avea with a 60-day free trial, followed by a monthly subscription fee. For added revenue, the company will also sell pay-per-clip video ringtones for those who aren't satisfied with the company's library of free videos.
"Analysts estimate that 50 percent of ringtone revenues will come from video ringtones as early as 2010; it's our mission to make that a reality," said Jon Medved, CEO of Vringo.
The company's foray into Turkey is just the first step in what it hopes will be a worldwide carrier-driven video ringtone market. Before its deal with Avea, Vringo was operating independently from carriers, but now that it has finally inked a carrier-driven model, it hopes to expand those deals around the world.
I remember a time when making ringtones used to be a very cumbersome experience. My technique of choice was to use the open-sourced Audacity then do various conversions in iTunes or Quicktime Pro by tweaking some of the advanced settings. However, the Web has spawned newer, less tedious methods. On of them, Audiko, is a particularly well-done effort, letting you grab audio tracks from your hard drive or the Web and customize them for use on your mobile phone.
While I think ringtones of popular songs are largely annoying and superfluous, the tools to create them are actually quite fun. Audiko simply layers the entire track on one timeline, while giving you a magnified area for each minute of the song to manipulate up to a 40-second ringtone from the segment of your choice. The entire editor is overlaid on a waveform of the song, and you can toggle whether or not you want a fade on the in and out, which can be helpful if your phone doesn't automatically do it for you.
When you're all finished creating your pocket masterpiece you've got three simple download options. One will save it as a normal mp3 ringtone compatible on most major handsets, as well as an option to download the .m4r iPhone-compatible ringtone--something you normally need an application like iToner or GarageBand (both Mac-only apps) to create. There's also a WAP-friendly URL to simply grab the audio file on your handset without having to sync to your desktop. Whatever you've created gets put into a pool of other songs, and you can even see and download other ringtones from the same artist that have been created by other users when you're all done.
See also:
Bring the canaries, we're going ToneMining
3Guppies gets media to your mobile
Pocketfuzz: Create your own ringtones, sort of
Edit MP3 tracks into ringtones for your phone without software or visual distractions using Audiko.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Thumbplay announced on Thursday a deal it just wrapped up with iLike, a music recommendation service big on Facebook, to exclusively stock iLike's virtual shelves with ringtones.
Thumbplay's ringtones are disguised on iLike.com by the generic command to "get ringtones," and placed alongside iTunes links. They'll also be sprinkled throughout the iLike Challenge game on iLike's site and will be available for purchase through the iLike Facebook app.
This is a definite win for Thumbplay. The mobile content distributor's limp Facebook app, a Photo Portal that pushes pictures uploaded from a Thumbplay locker to a mobile phone, has so far only grossed 10 active daily users. By teaming up with iLike, Facebook's big cheese music discovery app, with nearly 600,000 active users, Thumbplay has jumped on a better angle for getting their products to Facebook users, and dropping coins in their pocket as well.
Related story: Thumbplay: Unlimited storage now, Facebook apps coming soon
David Goldfarb's phone won't stop ringing.
The Vringo CTO is giving me a demo of Vringo's video ringtone service, now in public beta, to demonstrate how users can assign phone-formatted video clips as their outgoing ringtones. David has chosen a humorous singing cartoon of a green bear as his video calling card. He's set it up so that any phone he calls with a Vringo client will light up with his chosen video. If so desired, he could limit the output to his wife and send everyone else a much more sober video to announce his call.
Vringo reverses the conventional ringtone concept of users choosing songs to differentiate between contacts, entertain themselves with favorite songs, or make a stylistic statement. Here individuals control how they're perceived by friends, and can use "vringos" as a gift or personalized greeting. Users can upload their own clips on Vringo.com or record clips from within the Vringo phone app. It's easy to see how users could create happy birthday messages or video gifts.... Read more
LetsTalk has launched a new service this morning called ToneMine that lets you build your own ringtones. The service uses a multitrack composer that lets you drag and drop short, prerecorded sound clips onto an editing canvas. There are eight themed "packs" to choose from ranging from hip-hop and salsa, all the way to heavy metal. You also get some shared sound clips that will show up no matter what pack you've chosen.
The eventual goal is a takeaway ringtone you'll be able to use on your phone. You can get it sent directly to your handset via your carrier (which is configured when you sign up for the service), or download it as an MP3 ringtone to transfer on your own. You can also share it with other ToneMine users in a massive pool. There you can preview other people's ringtones and go in to remix them if you'd like to change something. It also keeps track of how many times it's been listened to and downloaded by other users.
Despite the selection of eight packs, there's really not that much to play with, although the editor is quite snappy. As an occasional user of Apple's Garageband application, I felt like the one thing it's missing is the capability to extend a looping sound clip. Instead, you're often dragging more clips together as well as you can. The service is also missing some of the commercial tie-in you'll find on competitors like Razz and Ringblender--the latter of which actually lets you go in and remix bits of commercial songs. It also reminded me a little bit of MusicShake, which demoed at last month's TechCrunch40 conference, although with a little less extensibility.
On a side note, for any 24 fans, you can get that wonderful CTU office ringtone free of charge from the site. I've embedded it after the break.
Put together all sorts of sounds, then spit them off to your phone to annoy everyone around you at meetings and in other public places.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Your boyfriend forget your 30th birthday?
Try sending some raging elephants his way.
Vringo, a video ringtone sharing company, announced Tuesday it's adding video clips from the Discovery Channel to its bevy of video ringtones offerings.
The 2- to 10-second Discovery Channel video clips run the gamut, of yes, raging elephants to bees to serene sunsets.
While the video clips are free, users have to be subscribers to Vringo on both the sending and receiving end to make use of the service. Users also need a compatible phone, such as one running on Symbian J2ME, or the Windows Mobile platform, on a Nokia or Sony Ericsson device.
Myxer introduced a new feature at DemoFall: a widget to instantly upload photos, videos or ringtones to mobile phones.
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Myxer)
It's aimed at people who want to make money on things like wallpaper and ringtones but don't have the technical know-how or the resources to distribute it themselves. Mobilized by Myxer is a delivery platform that can push any content to any phone. They've promised to keep up on the constantly fluctuating mobile standards and phones that enter the market so you don't have to. The only requirements are that users own the content they want to distribute, and know how to drag and drop the content into the publishing wizard.
And, hey, it's got an endorsement from Tay Zonday, the Internet phenom behind "Chocolate Rain" who sells the ringtone version of his song for $1.99 through the service. What else could you ask for?
