Did you know that iTunes offers short audio samples or previews of its entire library as free downloads? I am talking about those 30 second clips of every song on iTunes that you can listen to before you buy. That makes these iTunes previews perfect ringtones as a ringtone is usually nothing but a tiny snippet of a song and not the entire song.
The good news for iPhone users is that an iPhone hack can help you download these audio previews from iTunes and install them onto your iPhone as custom ringtones.
I was not aware that iTunes freely offers these short audio previews of its entire library. It might not have been a big deal until now, however as mentioned earlier an iPhone hack will help you use audio previews as custom ringtones on your iPhone.
Thanks to the folks at Tuaw below are the steps that you need to follow to make this work:
"1. Create a new playlist: Drag unpurchased songs from the iTunes store into your playlist. The songs will retain their "Add Song" buttons and their price within the playlist.
2. Export your playlist: Select the playlist in the sources column. Control-click/Right-click the playlist name and choose Export Song List from the pop-up menu.
3. Save the playlist as plain text: Select Plain Text from the Format pop-up and save the playlist file to your desktop.
4. Open the playlist file: It is a tab-delimited file of columns, so you can open it up in Excel (my preference, make sure to option-drag the text file onto the Excel icon) or a text editor like TextEdit.
5. Locate the file URLs: Each file URL appears in the final Location column for each line. Copy the URL.
6. Download the files: In Safari 3.0, open the Downloads window (Windows->Downloads). Paste the URL into the Download window and allow the file to transfer. Your computer must be authorized to your iTunes account. You may want to try playing back the file in QuickTime Player just to be sure it downloaded correctly. If you're not a Safari 3.0 user, use your favorite alternate such as curl, wget, or so forth.
7. Rename: Give the file a more meaningful name than, for example, "mzi.rwgtaash.aac.p.m4p". Retain the .m4p extension.
8. Upload to the iPhone: Use your favorite method (iphoneinterface, sshfs, sftp, whatever) to copy the file to /Library/Ringtones on your iPhone.
9. Select the ringtone: On the iPhone, navigate to Settings -> Sound > Ringtone and select the new file. The ringtone will play back as you select it."
Folks at Tuaw are also reporting that some newer music releases do not work as ringtones and have not been able to figure out the reason. But you still have zillions of songs to choose from so you shouldn't be complaining. Enjoy!!
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Love the idea but I'm having two problems: first, when I try to download the preview, it seems I need to have Quicktime Pro? I can't seem to just download the preview. Second: Can anyone point me to a tutorial on making ringtones on Garage Band from tracks I already have in my iTunes library?
Hey Playapixie,
Are you sure you followed the instructions the way they are mentioned above?
I again tried to download one of the preview songs in the Top Songs list using these instructions and I had no problems in downloading the song. I even played the downloaded song in iTunes (as it is my default player for audio files).
BTW, I tried this using the latest version of iTunes (7.3.1) as well as 7.0.2.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for visiting iPhoneHacks.com please do visit again.
cheers,
iPhone Hacks
I can't find the iphone interface anywhere to dl and does that work with XP? I have done everything else, but can't find anything to upload the files to my iphone.
Thanks!
Sharon
I have done everything up to step 8 and it tells me to use iphoneinterface?? I dont understand where i find that?? PLEASE HELPPP!
Hey Victoria,
You have three options:
1. Use iPhoneInterface:-
Link – http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/IPhoneInterface
2. Use iPHUC which is the second generation iPhoneInterface:-
Link – http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/IPHUC
3. Use iFuntastic 2.1:-
Download link available here – http://www.iphonealley.com/news/ifuntastic-gets-an-update-again
I think the third option will be the easiest of the three though iFuntastic is currently available on Intel-based MAC only.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for visiting iPhoneHacks.com do visit again.
cheers,
iPhone Hacks
thank you very much!
one more question when i go onto the website what file do i download it onto and what do i have to do with my iphone???
Try saving it with .m4a and not .m4p
That might help
how do you paste the url in the downloads thing
i cant do ctrl+v or right click and paste
when i save my playlist as a .txt file to my desktop, then open it in excel, there is nothing there but headings like "artist" "composer" "genre" and other things like that. can you tell me what i'm doing wrong?
when i save my playlist as a .txt file to my desktop, then open it in excel, there is nothing there but headings like "artist" "composer" "genre" and other things like that. can you tell me what i'm doing wrong?
LOOK ALL OF YOU WITH UPLOADINF PROBLEMS-THERE IS ONE SOLUTION!!!! DONT DO IT….
all u have to do is rename the .m4p to .m4r and drag that into itunes ringtones folder and it will sync the next time u plug ur iphone in!!!!! no more sshing!!!!
Steffwiz@gmail.com
let me know if this stops working or if u need help
i dont get how you save the playlist as plain text… im having trouble with that. I have the latest version of itunes if that helps