Ringtones on Music

August 26, 2008 1:23 PM

The Punch 'Em In The Dick thread contained this, which made me set up and post this, and wonder if ringtone downloads could be a cool feature to add to Music.

This feature would give musicians the option of uploading a ringtone version of their song and assigning it a keyword. The keyword would be displayed with their post and anyone could text "mefi" + keyword to 41411 to download the ringtone to their phone.

It's fairly trivial to set up with textmarks.com, but it's USA only. I think there are other sites that do the same for the UK and other countries.

The Punch 'Em In The Dick ringtone has had 40 requests so far.

posted by nonmyopicdave to feature requests at 1:23 PM (23 comments total)

Holy shit. I thought you were kidding.
posted by cortex at 1:27 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

That would be a pretty sad joke since I did nothing to improve upon the inspiration. It's real! (Note: that I got permission from Mediocre before (or soon thereafter) posting it).
posted by nonmyopicdave at 1:40 PM on August 26, 2008

Totally unrelated: The anchor tags in the 'this' links in the top post here don't work. For example, http://music.metafilter.com/mefi/2380#11785 gets rewritten as http://music.metafilter.com/2380/Punch-Em-In-The-Dick-NSFW-lyrics.
posted by ardgedee at 1:43 PM on August 26, 2008

This and this work, respectively.
posted by ardgedee at 1:45 PM on August 26, 2008

Are you on Safari, ard?
posted by cortex at 1:49 PM on August 26, 2008

The reason I ask.
posted by cortex at 1:49 PM on August 26, 2008

Yes, using Safari 3. But my 'this' links work where nonmyopicdave's doesn't.
posted by ardgedee at 1:50 PM on August 26, 2008

Since most people will be surfing MeFi Music from their computers why not just host the ringtone mp3s here and let people download them? Don't most people have Bluetooth these days?
posted by sveskemus at 1:52 PM on August 26, 2008

Okay. Yes. The reason you ask. Yes. Covered. Pls fix, pb. Sry.
posted by ardgedee at 1:53 PM on August 26, 2008

sveskemus: Preview and download should certainly be an option. I only hook up bluetooth when I want to move photos and movies off of my phone. That's about once a month. Texting for a ringtone would be much easier for me.
posted by nonmyopicdave at 2:41 PM on August 26, 2008

Yeah...this is a good idea.
posted by schyler523 at 2:41 PM on August 26, 2008

> Totally unrelated: The anchor tags in the 'this' links in the top post here don't work. For example, http://music.metafilter.com/mefi/2380#11785 gets rewritten as http://music.metafilter.com/2380/Punch-Em-In-The-Dick-NSFW-lyrics.

http://music.metafilter.com/mefi/2380/#11785

works fine in safari also.

without a "/" bad things happen.
posted by mrzarquon at 3:39 PM on August 26, 2008

oh, i see that has already been resolved.

nm then.
posted by mrzarquon at 3:41 PM on August 26, 2008

Can I use it as one of those ringback tone things? I'm going to assign it to my fiance so that he knows when he's in the doghouse.
posted by desjardins at 4:16 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I sent the txt and went to the link, but my phone says that I don't have permission to access the file.
posted by klangklangston at 4:23 PM on August 26, 2008

klang: Your phone does need to be web enabled. You need to be able to pull down an mp3 from the net. A workaround for that could be to return an MMS with the ringtone attached. The site I used for the 41411 shortcode doesn't support that though.
posted by nonmyopicdave at 4:41 PM on August 26, 2008

From the simulator on the textmarks, the ringtone link.
posted by Pronoiac at 5:04 PM on August 26, 2008

Yeah, my phone is web enabled, and does support (some) downloading of files from the web. However, I'm perfectly willing to blame Verizon, noting that their web "enabling" only seems to work perfectly on their sites and on google, and that despite claims to the contrary, downloading files outside of the Verizon sites seems very error-prone.

I was kinda hoping that it was just something simple on your end, though. Mostly because every time I've gone through this song-and-dance with Verizon at the store, they always claim that the phone and service are blameless and that it somehow must be the website, since the website isn't one of the "official" Verizon ones that they know work.

What can I say? Free phone from a company run by unimaginative dickbags.
posted by klangklangston at 5:12 PM on August 26, 2008

Verizon's a cockblocker with regards to ringtones.


(The workaround I've seen used by friends which may or may not be entirely legal is to send an email to [e-mail] with the sound file that you want to be a ringtone attached. It'll show up as a text/pix message. Then you can save the sound as a ringtone.)
posted by sperose at 5:52 PM on August 26, 2008

This will not be as awesome as it could be until we have our own commercial on MTV.
posted by koeselitz at 6:12 PM on August 26, 2008

sperose, you don't actually think that emailing yourself a ringtone "may or may not be entirely legal", do you? That was a joke, right?
posted by finite at 11:45 PM on August 26, 2008

I honestly don't know in this day and age. I've had a brick of a phone for so long that I don't know what's technically legit or not.
posted by sperose at 4:51 AM on August 27, 2008

Yeah, it may be that getting ringtones to all of the different phones out there is too difficult. There is no standardization. The SMS to mp3 download just doesn't catch everybody. Email gateways might work for some ([e-mail]). MMS might work for some. Bluetooth via computer might work for some. Nothing works for all.

Whoever would set this up would have to design for multiple options.

We need standards! The invisible hand of the free market needs to be punched in the dick.
posted by nonmyopicdave at 10:43 AM on August 27, 2008