Ringtones Are Live

Apple turned on ringtones in the iTunes store yesterday. I finally had a chance to try it and for the most part, it's pretty cool. As always, Apple has done an exceptional job of making it easy. The hardest part was selecting which part of the songs I wanted to use as the ringtone.

As covered elsewhere, you can only make ringtones of songs you purchased from the iTunes Store. That goes for songs purchased prior to yesterday too.

You cannot make ringtones of songs you already own but did not purchase through iTunes. It's all in the licensing and you have the RIAA to blame for this one. Believe it or not, ringtones are not considered derivative works and record companies can do as they please with them.

My beefs:

1. Your $0.99 purchase price only gets you the portion of the song you select. If you decide later you want a different part of the song, it's another $0.99.

2. One song, Happier by Guster, was indicated in the store as a ringtonable song, but once purchased it was not. Outcome of this pending with iTunes Customer Support. UPDATE: The helpful folks at iTunes support suggested ignoring the missing bell and right-clicking and selecting "Create Ringtone". Duh. That worked. The bell icon should still be showing tho.

3. The little bell icon needs to be added to your view. Go to view options and then select ringtone. Seems Apple would have turned this on by default for iPhone users. Nit-picky I know, but deal with it.