Apple

has a very closed ecosystem. Want to change ringtone, you need to follow the steps:

1. Transfer your mp3 files into iPhone, via the method of data transfer.

2. However, if mp3 is not transferred via iTunes, it is not recognized by Apple. Therefore, you need to use GrageBand. Click on Create Song. You can choose any icon you like, e.g. Keyboard, because you only need to drag your mp3 into a track (the one other than keyboard, and leave the keyboard track empty.)

3. Switch back to My Song and the newly created song will be saved automatically as “My Song”. You can rename it.

4. Then you can share it as Ringtone. The extension of Ringtone file is M4R and I think it means music for ringtone. As a comparison, the extension of song is m4a (music for AAC). Format of m4a is easy to share in multy different devices but m4r is protected under license of DRM, which means that m4r is only supported on apple products.

The logic of this strategy of closed ecosystem is that apple hope people to stay within its ecosystem as much as possible. However, it has to allow the wide spread formats to be included in the creative work of arts via apple tools. Therefore, you can include mp3 into GrageBand but you are not able to play it in apple music. The whole system is very NB(拧巴); you need iTunes, which is designed in a very complicated way.

Apple hopes that the creative arts by GrageBand can emphasize personality, so that we finally have a way to choose our preferred ringtones.