Make: Online: Ringtones Archives

Archive: Ringtones

April 8, 2006

Free MP3 ringtones from the USPTO

Uspto Seal 120
The US Patent Office has a kids section of sounds called "Trademark Soundex" - it's a great collection of trademarked sounds in MP3 and WAV formats. They make excellent ringtones and samples to mix in with music you might create. [via] - Link.

February 21, 2006

HOW TO - Stop paying for ring tones

Wired has a good article/how-to on making your own ring tones using our favorite audio tool, the open source Audacity.

You'll need -

Cell phone with MP3 ring-tone support

CD or MP3 of the song

Audio-editing software that allows export to MP3. If you don't already have this, Audacity is a good open-source program you can download for free, and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. You'll also need the LAME library for Windows, Mac or Linux. (LAME is a free downloadable MP3 codec that enables Audacity to encode to MP3.)

About 20 minutes

Link.

January 19, 2006

Turns out we all want to pay more for ringtones?

Makers, are you OK with paying more money for ringtone than you would for a complete song? These folks seem to think so - "According to The NPD Group, a leading provider of consumer and retail information, consumers are willing to pay more for a 30-second snippet of a song track to be used as a ringtone than to download an entire song track. In addition, consumers are willing to pay a premium (above the average $0.99 price for paid music downloads from the Web) for the convenience of downloading a full song directly to their mobile phone wherever and whenever they want." Link. Wouldn't it be better to buy the song, then make your own?

January 18, 2006

A Ringtone That Really Gets Under Your Skin?

Bruce on the Etel blog interviews the good doctor about her "Phertones" - ringtones that make you more attractive - "Make of it what you will, but a new site has popped up devoted to the promotion of Pherotones, which are presented as a sort of oddball, audible cousin of pheromones, which naturally you'll be able to use as ring tones on your cell phone. The site lures us in with the convincing tagline "You've heard of Pheromones, now try Pherotones!" and gripping personal testimonials like this one from Derrick of NYC, I wasn't much of a ladies' man before Pherotones. Now they call me 'Mr. Lady'-- Link. UPDATE: A Make reader may have confired our suspicion, this is part of an ad campaign. Read the comments for the details.

ArtistServer...

GarageSpin writes "ArtistServer was created by one guy, Gideon Marken. The ultimate DIY musician, he went out and built his own music hosting platform thousands of artists now use. All the music promotion tools are free (blog, podcast, ringtones, mobile sites, downloads, streams, etc), and it was even voted one of the top 5 music hosts by Time! Basically, a DIY musician empowering other musicians with DIY tools..!!" Link.

December 13, 2005

New Samsung phone can't set MP3's as Ringtones...

Wow, this is awful, the Samsung phone from T-mobile only plays DRM'd ringtones, you can't make your own - "The new slim Samsung RAZR-like slider phone just released today won't let you play our own mp3s as ringtones, they have to be the DRM'd version to work. which means, you have to pay for ringtones, even if you already have your own mp3s to load on there. There seems to be a solution in the discussion, but seriously, it feels like T-mobile is trying to suck every bit of money out of their customers after they already shelled out 300 bucks for this phone and also make you pay twice for a song you already bought." Thanks Phil! Link.

November 13, 2005

Record anything with "Silent Bob"

"Silent Bob records all incoming music, streaming or otherwise, from the soundcard. When the user decides to record and pushes the button, no problem Silent-Bob has already started the recording 2 minutes earlier! Never miss the begining!" This could be handy for podcasters or anyone looking to record sounds to make their own ringtones. [via] Link.

July 22, 2005

HOW TO make ringtones

The carriers tend to hide how to make ringtones so you'll buy them, but there are a few good resources to make your own. This one is from FunMobile...How do I make mp3, m4a/AAC, wav ringtones? How do I make a mmf ringtone? How do I make a qcp ringtone? How do I make ringtones from CD? How do I make a polyphonic (midi) ringtone? Tons of screenshots and how to action. Link.

July 5, 2005

Hacking the Motorola v265

"Unfortunately, Verizon Wireless cripples their phones so that you have to use their fee-based service in order to add new ringtones, or to transfer the pictures you take with the camera. The Verizon logo conceals the date display on the main screen and covers over the top portion of the background, among various other corporate silliness. Selling a device that is intentionally crippled is just plain ridiculous. Of course, the only natural thing to do in a situation like this is to hack it." [via] Link.

May 11, 2005

Yahoo! Music Engine review

Here's a look through my DIY goggles of the new Yahoo! Music Engine. It's not really a review, I didn't buy a song (and may never) but was interested in using it as a music manager on my PC since I get asked about which ones work the "least worst". It's pretty good- supports OGG and FLAC and plays nice with all the wacky devices I have for the most part. The thing I was most interested in was the Plug ins. I downloaded the Podcasting / Slurp one, the Line In recorder, Unix style shell and Alarm Clock- there are many more and anyone can develop additional ones. Here are some screenshots.

Read full story

April 29, 2005

New MAKE Audio show: Tiger review, DIY Ringtones, Car AI, Skype payphone

Here's the latest audio from MAKE Magazine! In this Make audio show- we review Mac OS X Tiger, talk about- weather cartels, DIY Ringtones, interview with a car's AI, Skype payphone test (it worked!) listener calls and more. Right click or Control + click to download this MP3 to you local system or add the MAKE Audio feed to your podcasting application and get the show automatically! Show notes after the jump...