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What's your opinion of ringtones?

Do you think it's ok to have songs as ringtones?

  • Yes

    Votes: 27 64.3%

  • No

    Votes: 15 35.7%
  • Total voters
    42
Dmac77

Dmac77

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 2, 2008
2,165
3
Michigan
I just go my iPhone today, and I was really disappointed with the choices for ringtones (the AT&T tone wasn't even there). So I decided to make a ringtone out of Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones. Well anyways, I synced the ringtone and I personally like it, but when I went to Macy's with my Mom, it started to ring and people were giving me really weird/disgusted looks.

So what I'm trying to ask is, is it in your opinion ok to use songs as ringtones, even if your phone frequently goes off in public?

Thanks,

Don
 
If they give you dirty looks, let it play longer. Screw 'em. :D

That's a great tune.....

My current ringtune is the (old) Hockey Night In Canada Theme.
 
I generally hate ringtones, especially rap ringtones. However, I will admit I made a super short ringtone, "Call Call" by The Faint. You can't really tell it's a song though, it just sounds like an older polyphonic ringtone.
 
Wirelessly posted (Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Hornay: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; U; Series60/5.0 Nokia5800d-1/10.0.010; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

Yeah, they definitely could have been subjected to worse. Mine used to be that 34 second song by The Streets called 'Who Dare Wins'. Decent song from his only decent album, but when some 10 year old English kid heard it go off when I was crossing over to TST on Star Ferry in HK, I felt a bit weird about using a song. That was only after he pointed at me and told his mum that he knew that song. He was probably surprised, being in HK and all.
 
meh let them get over it. People tend to give strange looks to random ring tones. I get strange looks for my ringtone which is from the theme from Transformers The Movie (1984) It goes off and you hear "TRANSFORMERS". People look at me strange but hey it makes it really easy to tell when it is my phone going off.
 
So long as it's a right song, and not something irritating.

On my old Razr I had Alan Partridge saying "splendid and tremendous!" when I got a message and a short 30 second track from Cassetteboy as a ringtone. But it just sounded like one of them preinstalled tracks that tries to be hip anyways :D.

I don't like hearing hardcore anything as a ringtone, be it rock, rap, dance. But that's just me.
 
I'm not the biggest fan of songs as ringtones, I like use classic sound clips or movie soundclips. For example, I like to use the Close Encounters 5 note greeting, or the Star Wars Cantina Bar Music, or the theme to the Bennie Hill Show. I feel like pop songs tend to distort way too much with the small speaker and just sound annoying.
 
I don't mind, but if the guy with the phone sets it high just so everyone has the pleasure of hearing it when it goes off, he's an idiot. You can have a ringtone and be discreet.

I waffle back and forth between Layla by Derek & The Dominoes (the opening riff) and Extreme Ways. Tried making the "Hello, hello" refrain from Vertigo but couldn't quite nail it..
 
I hate ringtones and will ban them when I become all benevolent ruler of the world. I just don't get all these people who put ringtones on their phone and then get all red faced when they ring. I'd be embarrassed too if I had that crap on my phone.
 
rdowns said:
I hate ringtones and will ban them when I become all malevolent ruler of the world. I just don't get all these people who put ringtones on their phone and then get all red faced when they ring. I'd be embarrassed too if I had that crap on my phone.
Click to expand...

Checked that fer ya.
 
I think song ringtones are fine! Of course one should be aware of their surrondings. If at work in a professional environment I think a normal ring or even better vibrate. Out and about with friends or family play what you want.
 
My ringtone is the chorus to "Never Gonna Give you Up"- Rick Astley :D

I always get weird looks, but it makes me happy to be able to Rick Roll people on the go. :p
 
I work in registration at a clinic and last week there was this patient signing in and the patients friends cell phone started ringing. The ringtone wasn't a song, but said "You have a ho on line one...You have a ho on line one" and I immediately started cracking up because of the looks some of the people in the waiting room were giving this woman (yes, a woman had the ringtone). Luckily, that patient wasn't signing in at my window.
 
I don't mind them, in my eyes its a way to have a unique ringtone that nobody else has, so you know that it's your phone. But I do find it annoying when everybody has the same ringtone, when it seems like 1 out of every 4 people at my school has "I'm Shipping up to Boston" as their ringtone.

But my real problem with ringtones is not what it is (song, tone, etc), but people who blast their ringtones in quiet areas, the worst being the local commuter rail, where you will have some person whose phone goes off every 3 minutes and they refuse to put their phone on silent or vibrate. My other issue is people with the beeping tone for their text messages, and when they are receiving 5 texts a minute. That is my real problem when it comes to ringtones.
 
I don't mind ringtones in public as long as I don't hear them in the movie theatre or a restaurant. Everywhere else is fine.:)
 
Whatever I suppose, (I voted yes). Though I'm generally not comfortable with a lyrical ringtone myself. I did use garage band to turn the opening 20 or 30 seconds of "Drunken Lullabies" by Flogging Molly into a ringtone and I use it every so often. But my phone is set to vibrate only most of the time.

SLC
 
I should qualify - I have mine on vibrate unless I'm out with rowdy friends or home..

So, most of the time my phone is likely to go off, it's just gonna buzz my hip.
 
I'm not a fan. I've used them in the past, but I much prefer a standard ringer/vibrate. I leave my iPhone set to "Old Phone", which I quite like, and that's that. :)
 
I didn't use to like them at all, but I've kind of grown to accept them. :)

I have some people set with specific ringtones, but I let them choose which songs they want. Heh. I still have Marimba as my default ringtone on my iPhone.
 
I have "What is Love" by Haddaway (link) as my ringtone. Priceless. Classic. People around me laugh, some start doing the head-bob from Night at the Roxbury. I'm not easily embarrassed in public, so it works...though ultimately my phone is on vibrate the vast majority of the time. I only put the ringtone on when I think I might not feel it vibrate, which is rarely.
 
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