If you think that RIAA is the No1 greed force in the world you obviously don’t have a cellphone. According to The Register Apple was pressured by mobile carriers to remove an upcoming feature from iLife’06 that would allow users to remix their own ringtones via iTunes. The cellular networks charge between $1 and $4 for a single ringtone and obviously don’t want to lose this huge revenue to Apple. Apparently ringtones are their No2 source for data revenue after SMS. My take: I don’t get all the millions of people who spend money on a 10-second .mid ringtone! Use the defaults or mix your own.
Apple Axes ‘iRingTones’ Project
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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A lot of people pay for these ring tones because they aren’t tech-savy and wouldn’t have a clue as to how they “mix” a ringtone. I personally have never paid for a ringtone because it definitely is a rip off.
I agree that it’s a total rip off. And I also agree that they are not tech-savy to make their own. It’s just that I personally have a principle to not buy stuff that are rip offs even if I don’t have the means to make them myself.
I believe that the cellular carriers are so seriously ripping off their customers that in my book, is even worse than anything RIAA has done so far. And RIAA gets most of the slack for this kind of stuff while cellular carriers don’t. It’s unfair.
Its no unfair; do what I do, stick with the standard ring tone! hell, there are idiots out there who pay for those jingles, themes, wall papers etc.
Its a bloody phone for heaven sake! its used to make calls, txt message, maybe send a few bloody photos, but it isn’t some sort of damn ‘life style’ device that one must feel the need to ‘customise’ and ‘pimp up’ like some sort of damn car or bike.
I have only a minimal interest in mobile phones outside of their basic functions too. However, a customized ringtone is useful to distingiush the sound of your own phone when it starts to ring.
Well then, why not have a ring tone AND the thing vibrating at the same time? thats what I do!
Is it…? I got my current phone for almost a year now and I only ever had somebody in my proximity with the same ring tone *once* (and I live in a biiig city!). And since this person wasn’t sitting on my lap, I could very well tell that it wasn’t my phone ringing there. — No, you don’t need a ring tone to distinguish your phone from others ringing around you, you need it because you are into goofy things like that most other grown-ups consider outright silly. – Proof? Well, read this thread, noone is all too overwhelmed with ring tones. On the other hand, watch some advertising during teen an pre-teen TV-breaks — there you got 99% of the ring tone advertising, which in turn defines your audience… Ring tones are childish.
I agree.
Just a bit problematic to find a decent midi application which doesn’t cost a fortune
. o O ( Perhaps it’s about time I start working on my midi-files again, though I’m no great songwriter )
You do realize that the RIAA takes a cut from the ringtones, right? It is their “intellectual property”, and they are somewhat responsible for the absurd pricing.
If it were up to the RIAA, the iTunes store pricing would be much higher than $1/track. They wanted to raise prices a while back, but Steve Jobs said no and even called them out on their greed.
That’s not to say that the carriers aren’t also ripping off customers. But that’s always been the case. They charge for everything they can. They push some fees off as “taxes” or whatever, so your $30/month plan really comes out closer to $35 or $40.
And they disable features of some phones to lock you into their own add-on services, rather than using built-in phone features to squeeze a few more bucks out of people.
Its absurd, but as long as fools pay for it, they’ll keep doing it.
My favorite is the new ring-back tones, or whatever the hell its called.. You call me, but instead of hearing the usuall “brrrrrrr… brrrrrrrr” ring sound while you wait for me to answer, I can pay $3/month so you hear a particular song.
And people are buying it…
It’s more than just “users not tech-savy”. The cell-phone companies have closed off competition to those who can create (content savy) ring-tones that people would want.
*Removed ’cause I don’t want to be responsible for a war, at least until I’m 45 years old*
Edited 2005-12-17 00:04
Instead… before we have any posts at all… we have individuals positing conspiracy theories about Apple not deserving the high praise they’ve managed to accumulate for themselves and Microsoft somehow deserving less disdain for their illegal activity and problems they’ve caused.
(This comment was in response to the troll that got modded down. Mod this down too please)
Edited 2005-12-16 23:50
Convenience!
1. People are not tech savvy enough
2. People are lazy
Hence … Profit!
Being tech-savy or not doesn’t mean you know everything. I have never met anyone that knows much about phones & ringtones. I don’t know much about it at all. I’m sure its easy to make a ringtone, but what are the specs? Are they phone dependent or carrier? Can I upload them to my website & just ftp them into my phone? Any walk throughs explaining this? I have a Sprint Sanyo & I’d love to install my own ringtones but have no clue how.
I’m a musician and a geek but I’m no expert on mobile phones. I thought that ring tones were those little tunes that are played via the little monophonic synthesis system of the phone. For reasons of vanity I made a little version of one of my own tunes to play when my phone rings.
The program that is linked to (audacity) wouldn’t have helped me as it is an audio editor not a sequencer. Do better phones have the ability to playback .wav audio now?
It’s only a dollar. How long does it take make your own ringtone if you are starting from scratch and don’t know what you are doing? How much is your time worth per hour?
> Do better phones have the ability to playback .wav
> audio now?
wav, or even mp3’s, for that matter.
Ah, just shows how out of date I am then.
Mobile phones still require a second man to carry them on a huge rucksack and have dial faces though, right? 🙂
My basic point still stands though.
Oh my God …
There is nothing I hate more than some uppity, Starbucks-sipping pretentious asshole/bitch picking out his/her ringtone in a public place. They know full well that it could be done somplace else, but they do it anyway, just to show others that they’re picking out ringtones for their stupid cell phone.
Seriously. What the hell is with people. It’s not like they play one or two … they go through the whole goddamn list of 25 shitty-sounding rap songs, pop tunes, and beep-boops. F***, sometimes I just want to punch people in the face. I’m sure there’d be applause.
“Linux is Poo”,
Shut your yap and watch your language.
You’re advertising your sewage mind.
How about going to some kind of gamers forum where that kind of low-life talk might get you some respect. It doesn’t here.
Leave
No.
Will you suck my weewee?
I like his/her nickname! Linux is Poo if you you were a girl I’d marry you! Then again, only if you were a pretty girl.
I’ll be anything for you, Timerever! 😉
Haha, no. Maybe in my next life. Actually, if karma’s a bitch, I’ll probably be a homosexual, American GNU/FSF hippie.
Sometimes people feel like punching you in the face.
As for the topic: it’s all within the framework of ‘It’s my territory, dude. Don’t even go there.’
How’s about Apple fix a lot of software bugs they have pushed with Tiger instead of focusing on useless, grabe D software that about 1% (or less) of their customers are going to use?
The truth hurts sometimes, doesn’t it? Is that why you want to punch me in the face? Because you feel inadequate when you have to spend half an hour recompiling your kernel while your friends are playing Half-Life 2?
I know what it’s like, and I feel bad for you. Relief is only one CD away, though.
Um, dude, you’re the one feeling inadequate enough to have nicknames actually displaying that inadequacy.
In the real world, people use whatever they want to use for whatever reasons they want. Your ‘superior’ MacOS (which I’m a user of) uses a lot of open source technologies, including the one that makes it possible for you to actually use that piece of software: GCC. Not only GCC, but even basic pieces of its software are based off of open source (Linux) technologies: Safari + KHTML.
So when you press that ‘Power’ button in your Mac mini, and click the Safari icon so you can come to OSNews and display your arrogance, remember that what made it possible for you to do that was… oh yes, GCC and KHTML.
open source = Linux ? GCC is a Linux technology ?
Not necessarily, but the dude has an obsession with talking crap about any type of OS that isn’t OS X. And almost always that’s Linux.
No, I talk crap about everything that deserves to be talked crap about — and in some cases that’s OS X too.
You are way off. GCC is a GNU project. KHTML is a KDE project. Neither of those has anything to do with Linux kernel. GNU/Linux as an operating system makes use of GCC, and sometimes makes use of KDE (and indirectly KHTML). This is no different than Darwin/OS X as an operating system making use of GCC and KHTML.
Nice attempt at calling them Linux technologies though — I mean, they’re Linux-specific and all, right? Because Darwin, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, SkyOS, and every other open-source OS don’t use GCC?
Freaking nugget. Too bad there’s no mod-down option for blatantly wrong information.
Um, dude, KDE is a Linux project. It also runs on Unix (a very broad term) but their focus is first Linux. And by Linux, I don’t mean the kernel only, but all those technologies and frameworks that make it possible to run all those open source/free apps using the Linux kernel as the basis of the system. Call it GNU/Linux if you wish.
It’s an exercise in futility trying to have a normal discussion with you without retorting to half-baked attempts of arrogance from you. So, due to that, and my general lack of time for trolls, I say bye to you and keep trolling.
KDE is a DE project. It runs fine on many *nixes, even OS X.
Don’t try to tell me, or anyone, that it is a “Linux” project, just like you said GCC was a Linux project. Just shut up before you dig yourself into a deeper hole. Loser.
If you ever punch anyone of them, please let me know.
I’ll announce to the whole world that “Linux Is Poo” has returned to sanity.
And oh… btw. I’d like to punch them too.
You take the everything west from Greenwich and to the dateline, and I take everything east from Greenwich and to the dateline.
Divide and conquer!
Hahaha … you can have Asia and all of their filthy plagues and viruses. I’ll take the US/Canada and reform them. Oh yeah, and no more Linux on my side.
That’s right.
I have told some prick business-man prick on the bus to come over and fondle my left nut after he spent 15 minutes picking ring tones, and then another 10 calling friends to have him call him back to test his customized per-person tones. I am somewhat sane. And just a bit easily-irritated.
I agree with Linux Is Poo. I actually think that makin g people pay for their ringtons is probably what keeps this behaviour from becoming an epidemic!! If the millions of people who use iTunes suddenly had an easy means of creating ringtones this nuisance would increase ten-fold.
Surely “real music” tones have reached the states, right? Surely this isn’t about midi files, this is about real music tones. That is what makes money here in Europe, anyway.
There’s no question that ringtones sampled from popular music make money. There’s plenty of people who pay for them.
However you can buy an entire song off iTunes for $1. A 10-30 second ringtone sample of that song will cost your $1-$4, depending on your provider, phone, and where you buy it. Paying more for less is what I’d call a ripoff.
Going further, some mobile phone services disable features of some phones (the Sidekick on T-Mobile, some bluetooth phones on Verizon, etc) so you can’t upload your own ringtones. They pretty much lock you into their download service to get ringtones, so even if you are technically savvy, you still can’t roll your own. Its a business decision, and one that makes them plenty of money.
Unfortunately for me, the limited offering of ringtones doesn’t provide compelling content to me. I don’t want the same 50-cent tune that everyone else has as their ringtone. I want something unique so when my phone rings, I know its mine. I am technically savvy, and have been able to make my own ringtones and enjoy using them on my phone when my carrier allows it… When they don’t I look for another carrier.
Going further, some mobile phone services disable features of some phones (the Sidekick on T-Mobile, some bluetooth phones on Verizon, etc) so you can’t upload your own ringtones. They pretty much lock you into their download service to get ringtones, so even if you are technically savvy, you still can’t roll your own. Its a business decision, and one that makes them plenty of money.
That doesn’t happen in the Netherlands, luckily. Here, you get a contract, and then you can select whatever phone the shop has to offer. It doesn’t matter, the phone companies have nothing to say about that. So you always get the real deal, the whole nine yards. And when you buy a phone in combo with a contract, the phones all become very inexpensive, and about 60% even becomes free. The more expensive your contract, the less you have to pay for your phone. My current phone I got for free too when I extended my contract.
Things might be different when talking about pre-paid. But, my last pre-paid phone was 6 or 7 years ago.
“However you can buy an entire song off iTunes for $1. A 10-30 second ringtone sample of that song will cost your $1-$4, depending on your provider, phone, and where you buy it. Paying more for less is what I’d call a ripoff. ”
Works for diet and other convience foods.
I don’t think its that they have something against custom ringtones, per say.
What I think that the celluar networks *really* feared was that Apple, as per their agenda, was going to make mixing ring tones *too* easy. A click here, a drag there, and voila’: custom ring-tone. Couple this with music available from iTunes and you’ve got a really awesome thing going here.
Thus, having the potential to put a very serious dent in the ring-tone market and its profits, the celluar networks did what all behemoth corporations and tempermental jackasses are wont to do: apply liberal handful of smackdown, rinse, lather, repeat.
Apple doesn’t want to piss off the cellular networks because they will need them soon enough: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?home&NewsID=13390
I used to work into one of these companies selling ringtones. I won’t name it of course, but yeah we all agreed inside the company it was a complete rip off.
But keep into your mind most people using a cell phone are not technical and have no idea of what a MIDI file is.
However I still can’t get what’s the deal with ringtones and other cell phones related “extras”.
I can see different ring tones being usefull when you need to be able to tell who’s phone is ringing. Although personally I preffer phones being set to vibrate, or even better: phones turned off!
There’s a certain element of masochism in having a cell phone though. With bored friends calling non stop wanting to talk, being called into work “anytime, anywhere”, and getting phone spam when you really want some piece and quiet. Sure the things have off buttons, but few people even seem to know where those are.
Look around, people dress by how they wish to “define” themselves, they customize their “preferences”, they choose cutesy wootsy answering machine messages, buy custom license plates that no-one understands, and blog all day for no-one to read. Ask yourself this… What stands out as personalized “defining” attention more than a crappy ring-tone going off every time you get a phone call?! Of course they want it! But what I don’t understand is how these companies will “pressure” Apple into NOT releasing this “feature”. Personally, I’m betting is more of an incentive… than pressure. What’s going on here, for real? My phone btw, just vibrates — I hate to hear it.
that would of been a cool feature in iTunes, to bad it got axed before it was even birthed in the program to the masses.
Woot, audacity has improved quite a lot since I last used it.
I have a Nokia 6230i that can play mp3’s just fine as ringtones. Not to mention MIDIs with (IIRC) 24 tracks.
The “problem” is uploading them to the phone: most phones don’t come with a USB cable and computers don’t have (generally) a bluetooth connection.
And as for older phones that just support monophonic ringtones, IIRC Nokias come with a software that allowed you to convert a 4 track midi in the right format.
I, for one, use an old ring ripped from a SonyEricsson phone
I have the same phone. There’s a MMC card inside under the battery. All you need is a SD/MMC cardreader and you’re golden. If you have a digital camera that uses SD and lets you mount it as a drive, you can even use that.
I haven’t used a ringtone for ages. I have my phone always set to vibrate, so whenever I get a call, I’m the only one to notice.
I agree with Mr. Poo that ringtones can get quite annoying. Why agravate others?
For the first time I like Poo’s comment
sometimes forget what a mystery technology is to much of the populace. I have never purchased a ringtone but can see why people would. Again, tech is a mystery to many, but by spending just a little money they can make the phone they carry ‘thiers.’ Given time and experimentation they could do the same thing for free, but why bother?
Personally, I create my own out of my music collection or by whipping something new up. I have individual ring tones for the important people in my life and tones for different groups of clients/contacts. That way I can tell who is calling by sound.
Kokopelli (since I can not login from my pohne.)
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240×320)
I seriously doubt the validity of this rumour.
To begin with, Apple hasn’t been to keen over to the record industry so they probably doesn’t give in to easily to any other either. Second, I don’t see why the telcos should decide wether I can create my own ring tones or not.
I can understand that they might not want copyrighted (drm-free) songs freely availible but how can they possibly prevent me from making my own tunes from scratch? Should I not be allowed to make (proper) music without the permission from the record companies either? Besides, since most new phones play mp3s (meaning you can have any song as your ringtone), the argument is moot to begin with….
Remember, with the iTunes phone, Apple is trying to get into the Cell Phone market. Making it too easy to make custom ringtones would irritate the cell phone companies by stealing a cash cow. They don’t want to rock the boat at this early stage, wheras the iTunes music store is fairly well established (look at all those iPods, after all)
I make my own midi-files with miditracker
since im an old amiga protracker/fasttracker2 musician it’s not hard at all 
My phone came with some sort of Midi creation program where you can mix segments. So, MY annoying ringtone is at least partially self-composed…
I keep it on silent mode most of the time anyway.
Well, I consider myself to be somewhat tech savvy… I know what a MIDI file is and all that.
But I’ve got a cheap phone — no Bluetooth and I’m not going to spend $30 for a cable to hook it up to a computer.
My wife and I are on cell phone only, no landline. We each have our own MIDI ringtone (purchased from Verizon for $1.99 each). It’s relatively inexpensive, but very expensive for what you get.
As far as I know, the only way to get a ringtone into my phone is through the service provider.
—
I’ll just have to get a better phone in a year or two! 😉
Or, you could all do like I am doing, refuse to patronize the cell companies at all. Refuse to buy one and subject yourself to their fsck’d up contract schemes and their “nickel and dime you to death” business practices. Get some peace and quiet.
Don’t forget that there are several carriers who intentionally disable features of their phones (like bluetooth file transfer) so that they can force you to go through their network, and charge you to do it.
And that, my friends, is why we will never, ever have this mythical, pie-in-the-sky convergence that Microsoft, Intel and other lunatic companies who have dollar signs in their eyes are talking about.
Having an Apple phone would enable people to get an awful lot done. Trasfer your iTunes songs to your phone, and come up with your own ringtones. What’s wrong with that? Alas, the mobile phone carriers want you to chop your arms and legs off putting it on your bill to download it over their networks. The RIAA also want to restrict content and music downloads to such an extent that we will never have convergence, and never be able to copy stuff we own to any device that we own.
The future is an awful lot further off than anyone thinks.
And who are those carriers to tell Apple what to do?
Ringtons are indeed stupid, but I did buy them. Why on earth would I make my own when I can buy one via GPRS with three clicks and E0.75? My previous phones didn’t have .mp3 support either.
I find it rather insulting to go call people idiots just because they do not care enough about ringtones to make their own. Sometimes the troubles to make something yourself are greater then the cost of buying that something. It’s like making a cheap hamburger when you live next to a Burger King.
On my current phone, I use a .mp3 ringtone from a Dutch podcast [1] I participated in a few times– the tune is Apple’s switch campaign’s music slightly modded, and its unintrusive. I downloaded it to my phone using bluetooth.
[1] http://www.kmac.nl
My phone goes “Riiiiiinnnngg, Riiiiiiinnnngg” just like a normal phone. That’s how I know it’s me ringing, ’cause everyone else goes, “Boop, deep, boop, boop, deeeeep, ding, ding, doop, dingy ding, doop…”.
I like a phone that sounds like a phone, I like a spade that digs like a spade…
Very handy.
go to walmart…download the mp3 snippit… and if needed convert to whatever format you need… data cable to phone…
WAAALLLAAAA cool free ringtones
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