Convert any iPhone or iTunes song into a ringtone

Posted on September 6, 2007 at 7:54 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Convert File Formats series!

If you’re looking for ways to convert the music you already have on your MAC or PC or that you already purchased from iTunes into ringtones for your iPhone, there are a couple of ways to go about it. This way, you can save yourself an extra buck if you’re downloading the song for iTunes and downloading the same song as a ringtone! Why pay twice!?

The first method involves downloading a small utility application called SendSong, which installs onto your iPhone and will convert any song in your library into a ringtone. However, it’s not super easy getting this program onto your iPhone! First you’ll need to install another program called AppTapp onto your MAC, which will transfer the SendSong program to your iPhone. I’ve never tried this, so you’ll have to read the instructions, but it doesn’t look very difficult.

Finally, once installed, you choose a song from your library and can either Send to Email or Send to Ringtones.

The second method involves downloading iTunes free previews of songs and using those as your ringtones. Basically, this method involves sneakily finding the actual URLs of the preview files and then downloading them using Safari. After that, simply rename the files with a different extension (.M4P) and then upload them to your iPhone. The link at the beginning of this paragraph walks you through it step by step.

The third method is to use a couple of iPhone ringtone/application management apps for Windows or MAC. The other two methods above were all for MAC users, so not very useful for Windows users. However, there are two apps that you can use on Windows to create your own custom iPhone ringtones, iBrickr (which is free) and iPhoneRingToneMaker (which is only $15).

Using iBrickr, you can modify your iPhone, add and delete custom ringtones, and even install third-party applications like games, productivity apps, etc.

iPhoneRingtoneMaker supports converting your MP3, WAV, or OGG music files into ringtone format and then automatically uploads them to your iPhone. Of course, it also supports converting the songs you have already purchased from iTunes. Also, using this software, you can customize the iPhone to use your own custom sound or MP3 for the alarm clock!

For MAC users, there are always lots of cool apps, one of them being iFuntastic, which is free and lets your take control of just about every aspect of the iPhone. Of course, since this program can also modify the iPhone configuration, you need to be careful! You at your own risk! If you’re kind of scared, just use it to transfer ringtones!

Lastly, if you want a slightly more stable and professional iPhone manager for the MAC, check out iToner (also only $15), which lets your create ringtones by simply dropping audio files on the faux iPhone interface and syncing. The best thing about this program is that it doesn’t require any hacking, modifying, or resetting of your iPhone, which is always nice! This program will work with protected iTunes tracks also.