Apple never ceases to improvise and innovate, always ready to up the ante and create new benchmarks, whenever competition is seen hotting up.
In the recent past, there has been a great deal of talk and rumors about there being a consistent decline in the ringtone craze off late, and this is mainly attributed to the fact that users are now adept at creating their own ringtones easily from song downloads.
There are sites such as makeownringtone.com that allow users to create ringtones for free. Users just need to upload songs in various formats, such as MP3 and WMA, and then select the part of the song they want to use as a ringtone, remix their selection and upload the final result to their phones. As simple as that!
CNET sources recently created a base for rumors by reporting that Apple has come up with an excellent innovative idea, that of offering ready-made ringtones for the iPhone.
Apple has concentrated a lot on the iPhone in the past and continues to do so. iPhone users have enjoyed the option of creating their own custom-made ringtones for their devices ever since 2007. Users had to look for the bell icon next to the song that indicates the song can be converted into a ringtone, and double click on the bell for the ringtone editor to open. Once the portion of the song for the ringtone is selected, the user has to click buy, for the ringtone to be created and the user charged for the purchase. It will then show up in a ringtone play list to be synced to the iPhone. The whole process takes the least amount of time and one doesn’t have to be tech savvy either to figure out how it is done. Even a child can do it with ease.
However, Apple is bent on pampering and making iPhone users lazier than ever. It is said to have struck a deal with the music industry and obtained rights for offering ready-made ringtones.
Ringtones have been a hit with the users ever since they have been introduced. The music industry benefits a great deal from them too, as it has been seen that people prefer ringtones that play for a few seconds rather than full song downloads. In the past, people were even wiling to pay $3 to hear bits of their favorite song when receiving an incoming call, in MIDI format. Music labels and retailers find them more profitable when compared to full song downloads.
But now most phones use the standard file formats, such as MP3s and users who are not happy with default ringtones, use the option of creating their own. It costs just 99 cents to use the custom ringtone feature on the iPhone, and it enables them to select a 30-second segment of a song to play back as a ringtone on their iPhones.
But these music snippets are now becoming more of a convenience-based feature, what with Apple painstakingly editing these ringtone clips. Users can just select from a 30-second ready-made ringtone clip created by Apple. This alleviates the need to create ringtones of their own.
Although, the cost of these ready-to-use ringtones is not known yet, it is rumored that they could be anywhere between $0.79 and $1.29. While some people opine that these ready-made ringtones may help improve sales, others feel that since Apple charges very less for custom ringtones and makes it simple to get any clip of a song; the ready-made ringtones may not really make much of a difference.
In a scenario, where users can get cost free, easily made ringtones by just selecting clips from any song they wish, why would they want to pay for it?
It is left to be seen if these ready-made ringtones from popular songs provide the much needed shot in the arm for a dying ringtone market. If you go to the discussion boards and see youngsters talking about them with all the enthusiasm and excitement, it sure does not look like the craze for ringtones has gone down. But sales figures are what we have to go by and there is still time for the verdict to be out.