Free Ringtones

With cell phone usage making land line telephones a thing of the past, not to mention an amazing number of cell phone users across the globe — something along the lines of 2 billion mobile phone subscribers, give or take a bit — there are many people looking for customizable features to differentiate a single phone from the other billion or so out there.

Some people search by phone make and model; others search for ring tones by the company who gives them talk time. For others, the way to find the right ring tone is in one word: “free.” Cell phone companies are charging anywhere from $1.99 to $4, and some of those ring tones expire after a few months. Other companies have limited features on their cell phones and an even more limited selection on their website.

Free ring tones can be found all over the internet, it usually just takes a bit of searching. Using search engines such as Google can  lead a mobile phone subscriber in the right direction, while  sometimes the websites of the cell phone companies themselves will  have affiliate links to websites the allow downloads of free ring  tones for paying members.

The kinds of ring tones available for free range from real tones to polyphonic tones, and occasionally include voice tones and sound effects. Chances are, given the number of different kinds of cell phone providers and cell phone makes and models, polyphonic tones will be the one user will be most likely to find, as they are the simplest form of ring tone and can be used by the widest variety of cell phones under most cell phone providers.

If is often important or required, when looking for free ring tones,  to understand the very basics of capabilities of the cell phone the  tones will be downloaded onto. Some have very specific file structures and are unable to read more commonly used file formats such as mp3 and wav. In a case where a cell phone requires a proprietary filing format, it could be quite useful in searching for free ring tones to add the file extension along with the words “free ring tones”, or even add the make and model of the cell phone itself.

It is important to keep in mind that, in some instances, when it comes to free ring tones, this saying often applies: “You get what you pay for.” In many cases, free ring tones are found on personal websites of people who are ring tone hobbyists — that is to say, people who find it entertaining to make their own ring tones during their free time. Some will make sound clips of popular or requested songs and turn them into formats that can be used in a cell phone.  Other take those same popular and requested songs and write out the musical notation in a way a computer can read and then sequence it before turning it into a file the cell phone can recognize.

There are two basic problems with most free ring tones found on this type of website, one of which is the fact that the selection on the site is often very limited or does not offer a wide range of ring tone formats for various cell phones or providers. As many of these are being done by people in their free time, they might not always have the freedom to do whole scores of music ring tones by themselves, especially if the ring tones are polyphonic instead of formatted real music clips.

Another problem can be the fact that the quality is not always on the same level as the quality of ring tones found on mobile phone service provider websites. The quality depends on the applications used to process the ring tones and the abilities and level of carefulness of the person making the tone. If a tone maker chooses not to pay close attention to the work — especially when making polyphonic ring tones, which require a lot of work and planning to do a real song justice — it can make or break their site’s popularity, given the number of ring tone websites on the internet.

With a little research and the free time to browse a large selection of music tones, it would be easy to find the right free ring tone for just about anyone. The options might not be as plentiful as pay sites, but they exist. It’s just a matter of finding them.