If you want to set a snippet of your favorite song as a ringtone on your mobile phone, it's going to cost you between 2 and 3 dollars depending on your plan carrier. Average ringtones last about 20 seconds, so you're actually paying 12 cents a second for a $2.49 cent ringtone. This is pretty ridiculous, considering you can buy an entire song on iTunes or Amazon.com for less than one dollar. If you were to buy an entire song according to your cell company's ringtone rate, one 3 minute song would cost a little over $21 dollars!
Again, you can buy an entire album on iTunes, Amazon, or Zune marketplace for less than $10.
Angry yet? lol
I found a great site, phonezoo.com, that allows you access to free user-created ringtones and gives you the ability to upload your favorite song, create and edit a ringtone exactly like you want it, absolutely free.
Once you go to www.phonezoo.com, you will have to create a free account, which requires you to enter an email address, the kind of phone you use, your cell number(which can be kept private)and cell carrier.
Now that you're registered, you'll see the home screen for your account. On this screen you'll see a list of the top ringtones of the past seven days that you can browse and add to your ringtones library. You can preview each tone, and when you click on the tone title you have the options to save to your pc, save to your PhoneZoo library, or send the tone directly to your phone as a text message.
No matter what option you choose, I would also save each tone you want to MyZoo. This keeps an online library of all the tones you use, and is the easiest way to quickly change tones if you like some variety, and if something goes wrong and you ever have to do a hard-reset on your phone, you still have all your tones backed-up online.
If you want to create a custom made ringtone, click on the RINGTONES tab at the top of the page, then click the CREATE FROM FILE option. Now you can upload an entire song to PhoneZoo, and edit the exact part of the song you want to set as your ringtone(up to 30 seconds per tone). You'll notice there is an option to list the ringtone as copyrighted content. Choosing this option lets you create a custom ringtone out of music you already own, but does not allow the tone to be downloaded by other users. Artists and musicians work very hard to make a living off of their product, and this protects their copyrights.
The bonus you get with PhoneZoo is that it is also a decent social networking site. You won't get as customizable a layout as you would with MySpace, or search criteria like you would with Facebook, but you can create a personal profile, add photos, meet and add other PhoneZoo users, send and receive messages to other users, and play games.
As with any social networking site, be very careful about personal information you share online, including pictures, phone numbers, or addresses, especially to people you don't know.
Have fun and stay safe online.
--kb
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