Is there a way to download music when listening to it?

Question

You can download video you are watching from sites like Youtube with a certain program. Can you download full songs that you can listen from Napster for free?

Answer 1

I believe Napster and Rhapsody and others encode a license into the file you are listening too. This encoded license would prevent you from listening it directly with Windows Media Player or other stand alone programs. There is usually a cache folder that the song downloads into and then you continue listening to the cache file in the future (assuming you dont clean it out). Trying to open the cached file usually doesn't work.

Getting a stand alone program to magically download a song and saving it to hard drive doesn't seem likely to work, since it can't imitate the login procedures to the services.

The way I've been doing it, is kind of like back in the old days of recording a song off a local radio station with a cassette deck, lol.

If you want to do a quick experiment before reading furthur, heres basically what I propose: Go to Start, Programs, Accessories, Entertainment, Sound Recorder (on Win2k - maybe a different place under Accesories on WinXP). Click Edit, Audio Properties. Make sure the Sound Recording properties is set to your Sound Card, or something called Primary Sound Driver. Hit the Record button and then flip over to Napster and click Play Song. You are now recording the song... (If volume doesn't seem to be correct or nothing at all, then double click the speaker icon by the windows clock, bottom right corner and make sure WAV is not set to be muted and adjust volume to about 3/4). Of course, this program only saves as a .wav file which will be huge. You want to save these recordings as .mp3 which makes a 55Mb .wav file into a 5Mb mp3 file.

Get a wav/mp3 editing program like Goldwave or CoolEdit. I personally use Goldwave http://www.goldwave.com

Under Options, Control Options (Goldwave) Click on Device Tab and make sure the record device is set to your Sound Card or Primary Sound Capture Driver. Under Record Tab, of the same options screen, check off the Monitor Input box (so that you see the VU meters moving whether or not you are recording). Done.

Adjust the volume controls of the program that is playing the song and/or adjust the Volume for Wav (double click the speaker by the clock on bottom right of windows). You want it to be around 7-8 on the VU meter so that it's a nice sound. Over 8-9 will sound distorted.

Now you just click the New... Button (or File, New...) and create a new blank wav file 2 channel stereo and 44100 sampling rate. Choose the length to be about 5:00 or 10:00 mins. Hit the Record button and flip over to Napster and click your Play button. You have to sit there and listen to the whole song while it records. When done hit stop record on Goldwave. Edit/trim off anything you dont want and save the file.

When you save the file, you can save as Wav or MP3. If you save it as wav, make sure the atributes on the save dialogue says PCM Signed, 16 bit Stereo. Or you can save As... a mp3 file directly. Saving a wav file is almost instanenous. When you Save as a Mp3, it has to compress the file and that can take 1-3 mins. Now you have a saved MP3 File without any of the licensing info encoded in it and can play anytime.

Lenghty process, I know, but after you do it a while, its pretty quick. The longest process is listening to the song while it records. I know it'd be nice to click a button and have a song magically saved/downloaded and saved, etc, but off of services like Napster, etc, I dont think thats gonna happen.

I normally listen to radio on napster/rhapsody and keep the record button going. Once I get the song trimmed up, I save it as a .wav file (because it saves instantly without delays). When I get bored (after maybe 5-10 songs). I then use another stand alone program I have called Alive Media Wav/Mp3 convertor and convert all the songs at once with at .bat file: Mp3wavconverter.exe *.wav /mp3 and walk away a while (because its still going to take 1-2 mins per song to convert.

Answer 2

Get this program to record everything you hear from your speakers http://www.roemersoftware.com/index.html#Free-Sound-Recorder into mp3 format.