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September 5, 2007

itunes_store

Beat goes on: Apple rings in new version of iTunes

Posted Sep. 5, ’07, 10:14 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

RingtonesChalk this one up for the rumor sites: Apple’s getting into the ringtone game. At today’s special event, Steve “Don’t call me, I’ll call you” Jobs announced that new version of iTunes shipping today would have, as its marquis feature, downloadable ringtones.

“We’re going to do ringtones in our own special way,” said Jobs. For the iPhone, natch. They’re shipping a custom ringtone maker built into iTunes that will allow you to make tones from songs available to iTunes, including, Jobs said “some songs you’ve already purchased.” There are 500,000 participating songs, suggesting that there are licensing details to be worked out with some content owners.

iTunes will add a ringtones item in the source list, and valid songs in your library that are “ringtonable” will have a bell icon placed next to them (we saw this icon leaked a while back, in iTunes 7). Click that, and the ringtone maker appears, letting you select which portion of the song you want to use, and automatically adding a fade in or fade out. The resulting file is added to your new ringtone folder and a tab in iTunes, where you can select what to sync to your iPhone.

Not that they’re doing this entirely out of the goodness of their hearts. Converting a song to a ringtone will cost you $0.99 on top of the $0.99 you pay for the song (or $1.29 for the iTunes Plus song, we presume). Jobs compared this to the $2.49 pricetag offered by many competitors; but assuming you make ringtones out of iTunes Plus tracks, that’s only a savings of $0.20.

And, assuming nothing breaks with the iTunes update, you can do the same thing with iFuntastic or Ambrosia’s iToner with somewhat fewer limitations.

Our verdict: thumbs down, unless the ringtone editing experience is truly phenomenal.


2 Comments

RLH said:

The big question is whether I will be able to convert a track I ripped--pardon me, I should have said "imported"-- from a CD.

September 5, 2007 10:37 AM
tayker Author Profile Page said:

I have a Samsung phone on the Sprint PCS cell network. Granted, it's not the iPhone, but I am using a better carrier than AT&T. I also make my own ring tones and put them on my phone for free. If the song I legally own is in my iTunes, which my iPhone would connect to, then why should someone have to pay Apple to transfer that song into the ring tone folder? That's on par with me having to pay Microsoft money for my computer to connect to my server via my network.

September 5, 2007 3:45 PM

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