Download Music
There are lots of different ways of downloading music. The best, and safest way is to purchase music from an online store, and then download it. If you cannot afford music, however, you can try to pirate it for free. Keep in mind, however, that this is not always legal and often comes with risks, such as viruses. This article will show you several different ways of downloading music.
Contents
Steps
Pirating Music For Free
- Rip music from YouTube. Visit http://www.youtube-mp3.org/ to find a simple interface for pulling audio files from YouTube videos and saving them as MP3s. This is a simple way to get songs you want quickly, though it has some drawbacks: the quality of your MP3 files will be fairly low, and the quality of the sound can't be improved if it was already poor on the YouTube video itself. Additionally, any empty space or non-musical parts of a video will also be ripped. However, the process is very easy: just paste the URL of the video you want into the text box and click “Convert Video.”
- This site and others like it exist in a legal limbo of sorts. The service itself may or may not be entirely legal, but your chances of getting in trouble from using it are slim to none.
- Download music directly. If you join an online community of music enthusiasts at a site without many restrictions on content, you may find the occasional discussion topic centered around sharing albums for free. These albums usually come with the personal recommendation of one or more other users, so they're a great way to explore new genres or artists without having to sift through a lot of chaff. The most common way they're shared is by direct download.
- Typically, one user will post a compressed file containing an entire album to a file hosting site such as Mega, Mediafire, or Zippyshare. He or she will then post a link to the download, along with a description of the music, and a YouTube sample, if there's one available. All you need to do to download the music is visit the address that user provided and click “download.”
- Be wary of viruses and (more commonly) mislabeled albums. If you ask for a high-profile new release and someone posts it immediately, it may very well be that you'll download the album only to find it's full of irritating novelty songs. Always keep your antivirus program on when directly downloading files, and be prepared to roll with the occasional practical joke.
- Direct downloads are also the most common way to get music from music blogs. Be aware that over time, download links on music blogs tend to “die” as they're policed by file hosting sites and removed.
- Torrent music. One of the most popular ways to get music is through torrenting. To torrent music, you need a program that can read torrent files, and the proper torrent file for the music you want to download. Torrent files themselves only contain directions on which files to download, so they're not illegal per se; you can find many torrents simply by performing a web search. There are also special torrenting communities like What.CD that offer vast private collections of music that's sometimes unavailable anywhere else, but entry into these communities is strictly controlled. Most people will have to make do with general torrent libraries.
- Once you download the torrent file, it should open automatically in your torrent program. If there are enough seeders (people sharing the album), your copy should download quickly. Check to be sure you know where your torrents download so that you don't lose track of any of them.
- Outside of private torrenting communities, torrenting music is better for acquiring older and more mainstream releases than for newer and underground releases.
- Once your torrent finishes downloading, it's considered polite to become a seeder yourself by leaving the program running. You don't have to if you don't want to, but it does help other users get the music more quickly and easily.
- Download music on a peer-to-peer network. Peer-to-peer networks require a special program to interface with. Many of the most popular ones, such as Limewire, share the GNU network; among these, your only real concern is choosing the program whose interface you like the best (as the files being shared are identical across all of them). There are also programs that run on separate peer-to-peer networks, such as Soulseek. Since you're snagging files directly from other users' hard drives, you'll need to wait until someone with the music you want is online before you can get it; however, this isn't usually a problem as peer-to-peer file sharing is very popular.
- Soulseek in particular is an excellent place to find all sorts of music files. It can even rival the selection of private torrent communities like What.CD at times. To download most music on Soulseek, you'll need to share some or all of your own music collection with its users in return.
- Depending on the client you use, peer-to-peer file downloading can be dangerous. Always check the file extension to be sure it's actually a music file before you download it, and check the file size to see if it's reasonable for the length and recording quality of the song. Soulseek, with its heavy emphasis on music, is relatively safe in this regard, but you should be wary no matter which network you use.
Purchasing Music Online
- Sign up with a retailer. Apple's iTunes Store and Amazon.com are the mos popular places to purchase and download music online. Both services make signing up easy. Once you've made a free account and provided payment information, you're free to browse their collections. Amazon.com boasts over 20 million songs available to purchase, while iTunes' exclusive contracts and slick interface make it a great choice for new and up-and-coming bands in particular.
- In addition to these sites, there are various other, smaller purveyors of digital music downloads. Feel free to browse these if you like, but remember: if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Amazon and Apple are good choices in large part because they're trustworthy.
- Browse daily deals. Both Amazon.com and the iTunes Store regularly offer sales on whole albums or individual songs. You can often find collections of older music (such as classical music recordings) for pennies per track, or interesting albums from artists you'd never have heard of otherwise.
- Take advantage of previews before downloading new music. Check to be sure that the sound of the songs is pleasant enough to warrant spending a few dollars on the album.
- If you really can't decide, you can sometimes use YouTube to look up an artist and hear whole songs before you buy. Streaming services like Spotify can also provide you with this option.
- Pay and download. As long as you're logged in, paying for your music is very easy: just click to download the tracks you want (or the entire album, which is usually cheaper than buying each track separately) and confirm payment. As soon as you do, the music will download very quickly onto your computer, at which point you can play it wherever and however loud you like for the rest of your life.
- Apple in particular has made some ill-fated forays into digital rights management (DRM), which in plain English means technology to limit your use of the music you download. They don't have a strict DRM policy these days, but be wary of possible changes in the future.
- iTunes music files typically download in M4A (MPEG-4 Audio) format, whereas Amazon files download as high-quality MP3 tracks instead. You may have options to change the file type before you download if you want; M4A files aren't as popular with audiophiles as lossless MP3 files are.
Free Legal Music Downloads
- Download free music from special sites. Sites like the long-running MP3.com offer a selection of constantly-updated songs for free download every day. At MP3.com, simply hover your pointer over “Free Music” at the top of the page and select a genre you're interested in. These sites tend towards obscure and little-known artists, but occasionally feature more popular acts.
- DatPiff.com is a site for hip-hop mixtapes, which are whole albums or EPs made by remixing preexisting back beats and samples, and then rapping over them. DatPiff allows its users five free downloads per day, not counting special promotional downloads. The community there is very active, so it's easy to find highly-rated mixtapes from talented up-and-coming rappers and producers.
- Jamendo.com is a site that features music exclusively released for free by independent artists. It's a wide mix of sounds that tends towards mainstream genres like folk, rock, and pop. The site runs very slowly, but there's tens of thousands of songs available completely for free, making it a great choice for a foray into new and unknown music.
- Download free music from major retailers. Keep your eyes peeled on Amazon.com and the iTunes Store for free music, as well. Both services periodically provide free tracks, and occasionally even free albums. These tend to be fairly obscure, but at the price they're asking, you might as well take a chance.
- Sometimes, these services will also run member promotions allowing you a few dollars of MP3 credit at no cost, which you can spend on whatever songs you want. Keep an ear to the ground; such promotions don't happen often.
- Download free music from bands directly. Many bands maintain an active online presence to cater to their fans and promote merchandise, upcoming tours, and other such things. Visit the websites of bands you love and join their communities by signing up for e-mail updates, becoming a fan on Facebook, and so on. Periodically, you'll get access to bonus tracks, demo tracks, and live session recordings for free!
- Use a service like Last.fm or Pandora to find artists similar to ones you like, and become a fan of those artists, as well. If you follow enough of them, you could be snagging great, new, free music on a weekly basis.
- Use free archives. There are a few free, nonprofit sites on the Internet that provide totally legal free music simply for the public good. These sites feature a lot of music across all different genres, including artists you've heard of and many you haven't yet. They're a great way to safely and securely find new music or fill in your collection of a favorite artist with rare live tracks and other cuts.
- Free Music Archive is a new site that aims to collect all publicly released free music under one roof. It hosts growing collections from the likes of indie radio giant KEXP (which posts all of its live session tracks), and WFMU New Jersey, the country's longest-running free form radio station, which has uploaded over 20,000 tracks to the archive to date.
- The Internet Archive is a massive collection that aims to record all of the information ever posted on the Internet. Its Audio section features thousands upon thousands of completely free tracks from both the past and the present.
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