Is Your Cellular Phone Ringtone Funky, Classy Or Plain Bo...Ring...Ring?
By Neil Day

Unless you’ve been under a rock these last few years, the hottest thing in cell phones is to pick out your cellular phone ringtone. This is the sound that is played when you have a phone call. Who knew picking out your ringtone could be such a huge thing? What type of ringtones can your cell phone play? Do you want a popular song, sound effect or movie quote for a ringtone?

The original cellular phone ringtone was a variation on a phone ringing. Different carriers and cell phone manufacturers had slightly different phone rings. You can still get a phone ringing as your ringtone if you want, but you’ll have to look hard for it! The vast majority of cell phone owners want popular music ringtones. On newer cell phones you can even have a different ringtone for every address book entry! The original cellular phone ringtone was polyphony which was usually a cheesy sounding midi. Thankfully cell phones can play digital audio and the sound quality of ringtones has increased greatly. Ringtones from digital audio can be music, speech or other sounds. Digital audio ringtones from songs are sometimes called realtones or truetones. You can even make a cellular phone ringtone from your voice over a popular song, which are called singtones.

The latest trend for a cellular phone ringtone is to make and mix your own ringtones. Sounds cool doesn’t it! There are a few websites that let you make your ringtone and upload it to your phone. You can make ringtones from the music you own no matter if its mp3 or still on your music cd. It’s cheaper than buying a music tone individually, plus you can pick the part of the song and make the ringtone sound exactly how you want it. You don’t have to worry about determining what format your cell phone takes, as these websites have software that will automatically determine it for you.

You can also make your own music tone ringtones on some websites. You use either a melody composer or sample arranger to make them. However only certain phones and carriers allow this type of ringtone format to be used. Most cell phones support only mp3 or midi format. There is a huge industry built around the cellular phone ringtone. There are even musicians having ringtones go platinum!

The only problem with ringtones is that there are a lot of free ringtone scams. If you search for free cellular phone ringtone you’ll see ads and websites that state they have free ringtones. But after you go to the site, choose your cell phone carrier and enter your phone number, you are automatically billed for a monthly subscription. Some sites but not all state in very light gray on a white background, in quite small text at the bottom of the page, that they provide a subscription service when you enter your phone number. It’s all very tricky. Plus you can’t tell what ringtones they offer, and if they have the one you’re looking for, until you enter in the pin number sent to your cell phone thereby activating the monthly subscription charge!

You really have to read all fine print on every page and watch out when hunting for your cellular phone ringtone.