Make your own ringtones for free!

Posted on April 16, 2008 at 5:10 am

Want to create your own ringtones for free? If you’re like me you spend a small fortune at the iTunes Music Store and other online retailers. So why pay your cell phone company $1.99 or more for thirty second clips of songs you already own? Instead, have the nifty Mobile17 online service edit your mp3, m4a, ogg or wma songs into ringtones and prepare them for your mobile handset. For free!

This free web-based service – Mobile17 – (formerly Smash the Tones) is a great way to access your own paid-for music library to make custom ring tones and avoid those annoying charges from your cellphone service provider. Who should use Mobile17?

Try it if any of these apply to you:

-You want a simple way to use a fifteen to thirty second music clip from one of your favorite songs without using any music or sound editing tools -or-

-You don’t have any of your own music editing tools to create short ringtones from your music files – or-

-You’re the creative type who likes to edit and mash-up songs into ringtones but you don’t have a USB cable to move your own files to your cell phone -or-

-You just hate paying your cell provider to download their mass-market ringtones at $1.99 or more per tone.

Mobile17 also let’s you send image files to your phone to set as wallpaper if you wish.

How to use it!

Mobile17 takes all the work of packaging and formatting the uploaded file. Based on your cellphone model and provider, the service prepares your file and sends it to your phone as either a text message, MMS, or as an email with a URL to retrieve the ringtone. All this is managed via several easy steps.

The only downside of this service is you have to create an account. That’s offset though by the fact that otherwise you would waste precious time telling Mobile17 about your handset and service provider every time you wanted to have it create and send a ringtone. Plus, Mobile17 only requires an email address to signup, and absolutely will NOT send you emails other than your initial activation code.

The look of the site is very busy, (the advertising saves you money remember!) but it steps you through a straightforward setup process. It shields you from as much technical knowledge of your phone as possible, other than if you can receive emails or MMS.

Get started!

Create your account, selecting your cell phone manufacturer, model and provider from the extremely comprehensive lists on the site. It’s updated constantly for new models and services.

When setting up your account the first time, Mobile17 will walk you through some a series of questions starting with your handset manufacturer, then the model, then the service provider. Once those basics are identified Mobile17 determines what types of ringtone files your handset supports (e.g. mp3, wav, MIDI) and what method or methods it can use to send the completed files to you.

After that is out of the way, you will be able to upload your music (or images) and tell Mobile17 how you want the song edited for your ringtone. For instance in my example below I am uploading a song from Daft Punk called “One More Time” and I am telling the service to start my ringtone at 1 minute 30 seconds from the start, and make it 15 seconds in length.

Once your song has been uploaded, Mobile17 advises you how long the current wait is for processing and packaging. The wait depends on time of day, and is expected when using a great free service such as this. If you’re in a hurry you can make a donation and it will give you preference. But for free you still won’t wait too long.

For the creative and technically inclined, use your favorite tool such as Garage Band (Mac only) or WavePad (my favorite free tool) to create your ringtone files by mashing up and sampling several songs, changing the volume, and creating fun sonic effects. Then save your work as one of the supported file types, upload to Mobile17, and send it to yourself as a custom ringtone.

You’ll have fun, and you will be keeping change in your pocket (isn’t your phone company rich enough?)!