How to turn your favorite song into an MP3 ringtone

1. Insert your music CD into the computer and launch the software that you are using to extract songs from CDs.

2. Find recording options in the software and ensure it is set to record in MP3. For example, Windows Media Player saves music from CDs in WMA format by default, but you should change it to MP3 for better compatibility with phones and portable audio players.

3. If you are going to listen to the music on your computer, or on a portable music player later on, save the music in high-quality MP3. Set the compression ratio or audio quality to at least 128Kbps. If this music is intended for your phone only, you can specify lower quality, higher compression ratio to save memory on the phone.

4. Digital music takes plenty of storage space and phones have limited memory space, unless you have a large capacity memory card on your phone. Yet, there's one trick that allows you to have a library of MP3 ringtones even in a small memory space: you can cut songs. For example, you can clip the intro or chorus away from the rest of a song, save the clipped portion only, and you have a 10 second ringtone that won't take much space. You'll need software like CDex to slice a song and turn it into an MP3.

 5. Copy the new ringtone from the computer to your phone using the phone's memory card. If it's not possible to use a memory card, use software that came with the phone, Bluetooth, or a cable to copy the ringtone.

Not all phones can play MP3 music, but most phones can play polyphonic tunes, or MIDI music. You can test if your phone can play MIDI by downloading a sample tune. Here's what you have to do to get free MIDI ringtones on your phone:

1. Find the MIDI tune you want to hear as your new ringtone. You can start your search on the Internet. For example, synthesized MIDI tunes of classical music and old songs, whose copyrights have expired, can often be found and downloaded from the Internet for free.

2. If you are musically talented, you can use MIDI software on your computer to create a ringtone of your own. It is also possible to modify MIDI tunes that you have found on the Internet and recreate something new out if it.

3. Copy the new ringtone from your computer to your phone using the phone's memory card. If there's no memory card on your phone, try sync software that came with the phone, Bluetooth, or a cable to copy music.

What could be more humiliating than having your phone's factory-set default ringtone announce to the world what a relic you are. Please join the fun with your true music ringtones, but since large parts of the world have already enjoyed years of Karaoke entertainment and certain songs have become more than familiar to us and our fellow-citizens, we kindly ask you not to set "My Way" as your ringtone.