You Can't Buy Me Love, but that doesn't mean you can't buy that track and other songs from John, Paul, George and Ringo as ringtones on iTunes.
Twenty-seven Beatles hits are available as ringtones through iTunes starting today. Each ringtone costs $1.29, and favorites include “Love Me Do,” “Ticket to Ride,” and “Yellow Submarine."
In a world where the iPhone's standard Marimba chime seems to be the ringtone de rigueur, you might think that Beatles ringtones would be meaningless to iPhone users. Perhaps. But there's no denying that ringtones are still a booming business for the music industry, raking in more than $2.1 billion in 2011 alone according to Gartner.
Regardless, if you already own your favorite Beatles song, or heck, the entire discography, then you don't really need to purchase a separate ringtone. Although you can no longer use iTunes' super-simple "one-click" method to quickly convert tracks to ringtones for 99 cents (this option has been discontinued), you can still use iTunes to make ringtones -- for free.
In iTunes version 10, right-click a song, select Get Info, then Options. Under Options, pick a start and stop time within the track no longer than 30 seconds in length. After hitting OK, right-click and select "Create AAC Version" to make your 30-second track. Now view the track in Finder, and change the file extension to “.m4r”. Delete the other version of the file from iTunes, and then add the .m4r version to iTunes -- the song will now be recognized as a ringtone you can use on your iPhone. For a more detailed, step-by-step illustration of how to do this, check out this link.
And if you're familiar with music editing software like Audacity (a free download), you can use it to similarly edit a track and add it back into iTunes as a ringtone. Again, just make sure the song is no longer than 30 seconds, or iTunes won't recognize it as a ringtone.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Beatles first made the jump to iTunes back in November 2010. Today's ringtones announcement is a nice little amuse bouche for iPhone users, but if you already own your Beatles tracks, you need not pay $1.29 for the privilege of setting 30-second clips as audio alerts.
