easyRing is……..well, easy!

Figuring that tomorrow is National 4S Day, decided to squeeze this one in tonight. It’s not that difficult to create custom ringtones for your Windows Phone, but for those lacking the skills, software or DRM free music there is easyRing. The app provides access to millions of song snippets (those 30 second previews) via Amazon.com and Mobiles24.com.

Downloading a ringtone is a two step process. First you do a search by song title, artist, album or browse using pre-determined categories like; classical, country, funny, latin, oldies, etc. You can preview as many tunes as you want to. When you find one you like, download it to your phone, where it gets saved in the easyRing folder. Downloads only take a flash, at least over WiFi. Tap Ringtones to see a list of downloaded entries. Select a tune and tap add, where you will have an opportunity to rename the tune or flag it as your default ringtone. Tap OK and your new ringtone is pushed into Microsoft’s ringtone folder, ready to be assigned to one of your contacts (People>[ContactName]>Edit.Ringtone).

I have a friend who is a big Eagles fan and when I was making a bunch of custom ringtones after installing Mango beta, I wanted to purchase Hotel California via Zune (using one of my credits), but it was not available to buy. And I couldn’t make a ringtone using the DRM protected track. This morning I opened easyRing, searched for the song and listened to about ten of the thirty plus selections for Hotel California available. Found a nice live version with a soft lead in, downloaded it, renamed it, and linked it to my friend’s contact info. Done.

A few things you should know. The list of downloaded tunes does not indicate if you already pushed them to the ringtone folder so you need to manage this yourself. Note that you can push the same tune more than once, with the same name or something different. The good news is you can delete tunes from within the app or via Settings>Ringtones+Sounds>Ringtone. And it does not appear that the ringtones you download sync with Zune desktop, like the custom ringtones you create. So if you need to hard reset or change devices, you have to start all over again. But you have to link all the ringtones to your contacts again anyway, so a time bandit either way. A backup solution via Dropbox or SkyDrive would be a nice addition.

Overall, for a version 1.0.0.0 app, it works well. The trial allows you to download 3 tunes so choose wisely young grasshopper. Or you can purchase the full unlimited version for 0.99. The app was released less than a week ago and already has 4.5 stars , based on 10 reviews. I am sure there will be many, many ringtone apps coming to the Marketplace, but this one is simple and does what it needs to do.You can find easyRing here.