Apple Launches Store for Text Message/Alert Tones

Wednesday October 12, 2011 10:38 AM PDT by Jordan Golson

Apple has launched a new store within iTunes specifically for Ringtones and Alert or text message tones. Many of the new alert tones are dialogue clips and sound effects from famous movies including Star Wars and Jaws. The most popular tone at the moment is a beep-boop-beep from R2-D2.
The iTunes Store on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch now includes the Tone Store — an incredible spectrum of music ringtones and alert tones that can be assigned to any alert setting on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
Ringtones have been available for purchase for a while, but the Alert Tones are a brand new offering. For a long time, the limited selection of alert tones was a big complaint of iPhone owners, especially those with several iPhones in a single household.

Ringtones are $1.29 and alert tones are $0.99.

To get to the Tones Store, head to Settings/Sounds and select any of the tone options. Then click "Buy More Tones" at the top of that window.

57 comments


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Maximillian
104 months ago
I'd rather find/convert my own. $1 for a 5 second sound? That's insane!
Rating: 10 Votes
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iCandii
104 months ago

For a long time, the limited selection of alert tones was a big complaint of iPhone owners, especially those with several iPhones in a single household.


#firstworldproblems
Rating: 8 Votes
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justinfreid
104 months ago
Ok...

Ok...will there be any free tones? Can people upload homemade ones for download? How about being able to choose any MP3 as a notification?
Rating: 7 Votes
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itcomesinwaves
104 months ago
Faq

FYI to everyone to asked. You can use ringtones as your text / alert tones (scroll down past the ‘alert tones’ list), so making your own text tone is the same process as making your own ringtone.

Also you can choose different sounds for:
Ringtone
Text Tone
New Voicemail
New Mail
Sent Mail
Tweet
Calendar Alerts
Reminder Alerts

And you can use your (homemade) ringtones for any of those as well.

edit: This all works on an iPhone 3GS.
Rating: 6 Votes
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samcraig
104 months ago
Sorry - I accidentally posted in this thread/news story from 1994 :rolleyes:
Rating: 6 Votes
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andylyon
104 months ago
I think this is more tragic than awesome. Something so simple shouldn't require a store and cost £0.99. iTunes should have a proper way of making them for free rather than hacks..
Rating: 5 Votes
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cosmokanga2
104 months ago
In iOS5 all your ringtones can be used as ringtones and text tones. So, you can create both now, or use your 30 second ringtones for text tones. Pretty awesome!
Rating: 5 Votes
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guzhogi
104 months ago
That's pretty cool. Only thing is $1.29 for a ringtone? Didn't Apple once let you create ringtones from songs on the Music Store for only $0.99? I'll admit, I may be wrong & could have hallucinated it. Hallucinating is pretty fun, you know. :p
Rating: 4 Votes
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mrockm01
104 months ago
It is very easy to make your own from a song
1) Choose song you want
2) Change length to the part you want (Get info-options- start time and end time). Turn up volume to +100%
3) create AAC version
4) I always add an extension to the name here so it does not interfere with another ringtone. for example change name from "song" to "song_t1" or any other number
5) Drag song to desktop
6) change extension from m4a to m4r
7) double click, it should play the text tone in the ringtone portion of iTunes
Rating: 4 Votes
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Toppa G's
104 months ago

What I want is unique text sounds for different contacts....rather than the same dang sound for all texts.


You can do this - each contact has the option to change the ring tone or the text tone. (Contacts -> Edit)
Rating: 3 Votes
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