How to Shorten Music for Ringtones

A ringtone is a custom sound that you can tell your cell phone to play whenever people call you. Instead of the standard "ringing" of a normal phone, you can tell your phone to play whatever noise you'd like--including music files. A full-length song is much too large to use as a ringtone, though. To be used on your phone, both its length and file size will have to be shortened, a process that is easy to do.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A MicroSD Card

1. Download and install the newest version of Apple's iTunes software. You can find this at apple.com/itunes. Even if you don't have an iPod or iPhone, iTunes is the easiest program for making ringtones that will work on any cell phone.

2. Load whatever music you want to turn into your ringtone into your iTunes library. You can do this by clicking on the "File" button at the top of the main program window and then selecting the "Add File" option.

3. Right-click on the song you are working with, and select the "Create Ringtone" option. This will automatically take the first 30 seconds of the song file and shorten it into a length perfect for a ringtone. Save this file to a directory you will be able to easily locate.

4. Put this new ringtone on whatever cell phone you have. On most models of cell phones this will involve plugging a MicroSD memory card into a card reader or port on your computer, dragging the file onto the MicroSD card using Windows Explorer, plugging the MicroSD card into your phone and selecting the ringtone using your phone's Settings menu.

References

• iTunes