Make ringtones from your iTunes music

It's really sucky how you cannot use your existing iTunes music as your ringtones. I mean you have already paid for the music so why not let you use it directly. Instead you either need to buy them as ringtones off the iTune Store or convert them.

The simplest way I found was to use iTunes itself to perform the conversion for you. Basically you need to listen to your music and determine how much of it you'd like to use for your ringtone, convert the song, import it into iTunes and then sync your iPhone.

Here's the step-by-step using iTunes 9

1. Launch iTunes 9
2. Select Music and listen to the song
   
3. Determine the start time and end time of your ringtone (recommend 30 seconds)
4. Right-click the song and select Get Info
5. Select the Options tab
6. Click on the start and end times and type in the start and end times
7. Click the OK button to close the dialog box
8. Right-click the same song and select Create AAC version
9. Note a new version of the song with the same name
10. Right-click the new song and select Show in Windows Explorer
11. Select the AAC version of the song and press the F2 key to rename the file
12. Rename the file extension from *.m4a to *.m4r
13. Close the Windows Explorer window
14. Right-click the new song and select Delete
15. Left click the File menu and select Add File to Library
16. Browse to the file, select it and Click Open
17. Finally sync your iPhone