Rogers Wireless forces DRM ringtone files on users

Alan says: "This is absolutely maddening. I just moved back to Canada from the US, and picked up a new cell from Rogers Wireless. I make my own ringtone files and as I was setting them up on my new Samsung phone, I got an error telling me that non-DRM files cannot be used as ringtones.

"Some internet investigation reveals this is indeed Rogers' corporate policy, and has been for about a year now."

That is, until I decided I wanted to change my ring tone. I did not want to have a pop song as my ring tone. I did not want music at all. I just wanted to have (what some people would consider) an annoying sound clip of several Formula One cars screeching past an observer on a straightaway. I’m a big F1 fan. And I figure that ring tone will cut through any sort of background noise I’ll encounter. So I uploaded the .mp3 file to my phone via Bluetooth, and tried to set it as a ring tone. But my phone wouldn’t let me. I started to try to diagnose the problem. Does it expect a CBR .mp3 file instead of a VBR one? No. Maybe it expects a file with a lower sample rate? No. Oh I know what it is, the file is in stereo. It probably expects a mono-encoded file. Hmm, not even that helps. The phone lets me see file details for all the ring tones. One of the metadata attributes is “Copyright”. All the ring tones had a value of “Protected” for this attribute. My ring tone said “None”. No way, I thought; don’t tell me they aren’t letting me use non-DRM .mp3 files for ring tones.

But sure enough, after some Internet research, I found that this was precisely the case. In mid-August, Rogers mandated that all their cell phones prevent users from utilizing non-DRM .mp3 files as ring tones. It was supposedly at the request of the music industry. But I’m sure the fact that Rogers charges $2.99 for a DRM ring tone had something to do with it.

Link

Reader comment:

Toby says:

The post on boingboing mentions his "new Samsung" but he quite clearly states in his blog it's a Nokia.

Robbo says:

I blogged about your post on Rogers DRM ringtones and received a comment suggesting that a workaround was to convert the MP3 to WMA and that would not require any copyright protection to be present. I don't know if that's a fact or if the reader misunderstood the issue (ie. DRM as opposed to MP3 vs. WMA) but I'm curious to find out if that's true or not.

Take care and thanks for BoingBoing.

René says

I'm also a Rogers Wireless user, using a Sony Ericsson w810i, and I had the same problem. After a bit of hunting online, I discovered that sony itself has a free utility to convert audio files into the appropriate format. I have no idea if the other phone manufacturers are using the same format... However, with Rogers selling ringtones, it seems likely. It's simpler than making the phone support a dozen differant DRM formats just for ringtones.

DRM Packager can be found here.

[#1 posted by niki22 , August 25, 2008 1:12 AM]

This comment is in regards to Rene's comment. I'm having the same problem ( duh...Roger's user), but I use a Samsung SGH-A516. Is the link that you provided compatible with my phone?