Making iTunes Ringtones

There is no need to buy ringtones in iTunes; you can make them for free from any songs that you already own. Other than Apple trying to suck money out of everything, I don't see a reason why it isn't built into iTunes since it's so easy. Anyway, here's how it's done in the Windows OS:

  1. Find a song you want to make a ringtone out of. For this example, I'll use "This Sweet Love" by James Yuill.

  2. Figure out approximately what 30 seconds (or less) of the song you want to use.

  3. Right-click on the song and select Get Info.

  4. On the Options tab, set the start and stop times.

  5. Click OK and play the song (only the selected portion will play).

  6. Repeat steps 3-5 to fine tune the start and stop times. I found it helpful to turn on single-track repeat when playing the song.

  7. Once you've got the start and stop times how you want them (mine were 0:02.5 - 0:15.1), select Preferences from the Edit menu. On the General tab, click Import Settings.

  8. Make sure "AAC Encoder" is selected in the first drop-down. Click OK twice to exit the preferences.

  9. Right-click on the song and select Create AAC Version.

  10. Right-click on the song again, select Get Info, uncheck the start and stop times on the Options tab, and click OK.

  11. Now find the file for the new version on your hard drive: right-click on the song and select Show in Windows Explorer.

    Mine are organized by Artist then Album, so it was located under
    %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Music\James Yuill\This Sweet Love (EP)

  12. There will be a file for each version of the song. The one with the latest creation date should be the copy we just created. If you do not see the ".m4a" extension on the file name, do the following:

    For Windows XP:
    1. From the Tools menu, select Folder Options.
    2. Select the View tab.
    3. Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types".
    4. Click OK.
    For Windows Vista:
    1. Go to Organize in the upper-left corner.
    2. Click Folder and Search Options.
    3. Select the View tab.
    4. Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types".
    5. Click OK.

    You can hide them again after the next step if you wish.

  13. Rename the file so that its extension is ".m4r". Confirm the change if it asks you.

  14. Move the file to the ringtones folder. Mine is at
    %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Ringtones

  15. Close iTunes, then double-click on the new ringtone file. This will re-open iTunes and add it to the Ringtones folder. (You could just drag the file into iTunes when it's open, but that doesn't always work for me.)

  16. For the last bit of cleanup, find the song in your Music folder in iTunes. It will now be listed twice, once with a little gray exclamation icon by it: delete that one from your library since it no longer exists (this was the AAC version we created; iTunes doesn't know we turned it into a ringtone).

That should be it. Now just sync your phone!