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How do I make an iTunes song into an iPhone ringtone?

I really love Miley Cyrus and want to turn her great song "Life's What You Make It" into a ringtone for my Mom's cellphone so that when I call, she hears Hannah Montana (well, Miley) singing, letting her know that it's me. I've heard that's not too hard but have no clue how to proceed.

Dave's Answer:

Unfortunately, I have taken a vow of not supporting teeny-bopper music, so I can't help you with this query. No, I better not say that as my 11yo daughter will never let me hear the end of it: she's quite a fan of Miley Cyrus and her alter ego Hannah Montana too. In fact, we listened to Miley all weekend as we drove around town, somewhat to my consternation. :-)

Nonetheless, I'll show you how to accomplish your goal with a different song. Okay? Same end result, just, um, a bit less pop.

My song of choice? The 80s new age group XTC and their song Senses Working Overtime. If you don't remember it, well, that's okay, you're probably younger than I am.

The first place you need to go is into the Apple iTunes application on your Mac or PC. Then find the song you want (I checked and they have "Life's What You Make It" for $0.99), just as I have done here:

Click "Buy Song" and a few seconds later you'll see the song downloading:

Once it's downloaded, just click on "Purchased" under the "Store" list and you'll see your Hannah Montana song, along with any other songs you might have purchased.

Now right-click (or, if you're on a Mac, Ctrl-click) on the song:

and choose "Create Ringtone..."

Now the lower half of the window opens up and shows you a waveform of your song, along with some basic buttons and options:

Experiment with selecting a specific portion of the song: you can click and drag the edges of the blue box to make the segment longer or shorter. Remember, a ringtone is a very short segment of music played over and over: with the "gap" setting you can specify the amount of quiet between each loop.

Tweak, fiddle, then click "Preview" to hear how it'd sound as a ringtone.

When you're done, well, what to do? It took me a few seconds to realize that I needed to make the window wider! When I did:

There ya go. The button desired is "Buy". Yes, you need to buy the rights to make a ringtone separate from buying the rights to listen to and enjoy the song. For another $0.99.

Once you do so, now you'll find a new entry in your "Ringtones" area:

Almost done. Now just plug in your Mom's iPhone, then click on the "Ringtones" tab and indicate that the phone should sync Ringtones with the computer, and sync her phone. The final step is to assign a custom ringtone on your iPhone and you're done!

Good luck with that. I hope your Mom's happy next time you call her while she's in an important business meeting! :-)

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Categorized: Cell Phones and Mobile Phones , Mac OS X Help (Article 8476)
Tagged: apple iphone, custom ringtones, hannah montana, itunes store, miley cyrus
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Comments

That is one way to do it, but if you already have the song (which I think the original question indicated), and have GarageBand on your computer, there is a much easier (and cheaper) way.

The link below outlines the steps to do this:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/ten-step-guide-to-iphone-custom-ringtones-in-garageband-08

Best,
Matt

Posted by: Matt at September 4, 2008 3:15 PM

Dave you did a good job of helping this girl but her mom will NEVER forgive you...

Posted by: Elvis at September 12, 2008 7:25 PM

Any AAC file under 35 seconds in length can be made into a custom ringtone by removing it from your iTunes library, changing the ".aac" file extension (yes, just the name of the file) to ".m4r" and dragging it back into iTunes.

I use iTunes to convert songs to AIFF, then Felt Tip Sound Studio to edit them down to under 35 seconds, before using iTunes again to convert back to AAC prior to changing the file extension. Easy as pie.

Posted by: Mike Kirby at September 24, 2008 3:08 PM

Hi. I think you have been the most helpful info site ever. Have just bought Iphone and couldnt belive it could NOT do some of the very basic things i wanted from a phone. One thing is " How can I customize the Incoming text message tone and not use one of the standard rubbish ones" please help.
Claire
xx

Posted by: Claire Godwin at November 16, 2008 1:54 PM

Right click, and choose create ringtone.
simple as that.

Posted by: toya at December 7, 2008 1:22 PM

Hi, I have tried to follow the instructions for using an itune for ringtone but for some reason I don't have the "create ringtone" in my list on the right click.

Posted by: Squeeky1 at December 11, 2008 2:03 PM

OMG! This is the BEST! Succient Instructions EVER! I don't know how anyone could not understand that. Thank you so much! Very Helpful! EXCELLENT! ***** 5 stars!

Posted by: Gelle at December 25, 2008 1:13 PM

the `create ringtone` icon doesn`t come up on my itunes , am i doing something wrong ?

Posted by: Paul at January 19, 2009 12:06 PM

Dave, thank you so much for making it so easy for us who are a little less techno-savvy. I just have a question/problem though. I can get the song to display create ringtone but when I click on it is says that the song is no longer available for being made into a ringtone. What's that all about? Also, some don't even give me the option of making them ringtones (meaning when I hit the ctrl button and click, the create ringtone option is not there.) Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Posted by: Reana at January 31, 2009 9:50 PM

im having the same problem as other people by the looks of it.. i dont have the 'create ringtone' option, is there any other way of doing it?

ive also tried the other way, where you convert the track to an .m4r format, and all it does is come up in the 'ipod' section on my iphone, and not with my ringtones?

help if possible please?!

Posted by: Jasmin at February 3, 2009 12:20 PM

Maybe you can try the site www.nakko.com

Posted by: Ronald Hes at March 20, 2009 6:10 AM

i tried to get a ringtone for my phone but if i sync it will delete all my other songs so i tried to do it how you said to click on the ringtones tab and that didnt work either.. does my i tunes have to automaticly update while my iphone is pluged in for that to work? i have it set to manually.

Posted by: jennie at May 14, 2009 11:09 AM

Hi, keep trying to turn a download into a ring tone but itunes keeps coming up with a problem whivh says unknow error 11556 check internet conection. fully conected to the internet and to itunes store any ideas. thanks baz

Posted by: Barry at June 5, 2009 3:30 AM

Do you have to buy the song before you can buy the ringtone or can you just buy the portion you want your ringtone to be so you don't have to pay twice?

Posted by: Jae at July 26, 2009 8:56 AM

Jae, I don't think you can do that because you only get a 30 second preview in iTunes before you buy. There isn't an option to buy just a portion.

This iTunes ringtone thing doesn't seem to work for some users outside the US. I'm in the UK and was told that I could simply change from the UK store to the US one - doing that allows me to choose which portion of the track I want to use as a ringtone but when I click on the 'create' button (think it says 'Buy' if you're in the UK) it just sits there thinking about it.

Posted by: Rob at July 29, 2009 2:06 PM

Posted by: Andy at September 4, 2009 12:38 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!