mp3 101
hooray! you've decided you're sick of spotify or whatever you were using, its increasing monthly subscription fees despite not paying artists well, and its ui that keeps getting stupider and stupider. what now?
shhhh: my personal solution has been to rip mp3 files from youtube for the most part. when possible, i buy albums on bandcamp. for portability, i use an old ipod touch as an mp3 player. you might be able to play mp3 files directly on your phone. i have not figured this out for my iphone yet, plus it does not have enough storage left lol! additionally, i have a small cd collection and an old phillips cd player, but i prefer the ipod since it's less clunky and you don't need to change out cds on long commutes.
paying artists
just because big corporations don't pay artists enough doesn't mean that we also shouldn't. making music is often a tough and unrewarding way to earn a living. as music fans, we should really be doing our best to support the artists we love. a good place to start is seeing if your favorite musicians have a bandcamp/kofi etc. if it's feasible for you, try tipping artists or paying to download their mp3 files. official mp3 downloads can start at 0 dollars are often super nice and include important metadata, lyrics, etc.
non-mp3 options
you can also try collecting older media formats like cds and cassettes and records, but this isn't (always) free. it also requires a lot of physical storage space. however, i like the possibility of making your own cds or mixtapes with mp3 files!
a note on buying portable music players
as mentioned, you could just use your phone. but having a separate mp3 player has the benefits of not taking up your storage space. plus it won't use your phone's battery (i like this because my phone is old and dying all the time!) you especially do not need to spend a ton on a cute refurbished walkman etc.! ive seen retrospekt list them for sale for over 100 dollars, and while i cannot attest to how nice the refurbishing is, it does not seem necessary from my point of view. even if you want an aesthetically pleasing cd player etc. you can often find them for cheap on ebay. just make sure the device has been tested, has a working battery, and that you have all the accessories you need, such as charging cables. you can use a trendier stores as a reference for which models you like, but you can often find them for a significant fraction of the price on ebay.
ingredients
you will need
- a computer, as far as i know
- a source for the music you want to download
- a way to save the audio as an mp3 file
- a place to store the files on your computer
- software that plays mp3 files
- (optional: for portability) a physical mp3 player.
what i use
- my laptop, which connects to my ipod with a usb cable
- youtube, using ublock to remove ads and save time
- MediaHuman Youtube to MP3 converter. MediaHuman also has other software available for download and many guides on how to use them.
- itunes without an apple id
- my ipod touch i got on ebay with a new battery and 16gb of storage space
recipe
before downloading anything
stay safe, check for malware and viruses using something like VirusTotal
1.locate audio
- find the music you'd like to download. it can even be a video or playlist.
- just make sure the link will work with whatever you end up using to download it as an mp3 file, and make sure you copied the link to the whole playlist, if you meant to do that.
- i like MediaHuman because it's compatible with Youtube, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp, and more.
2.download as mp3
- copy the link
- you can find a good old mp3 to youtube website on google, but this can get annoying if you want to download a bunch of songs at once. there will likely be a bunch of misleading ads too, if you don't have some kind of adblock. you could accidentally click on an unsafe link. let's avoid that! try installing an application instead
- if you're using mediahuman, you can edit the songs' metadata such as the album it belongs to, order of songs, genre etc. save the songs as mp3 files
- if your link is to a youtube video of an entire album, the entire album will be saved as one file/a singular song. unless you're using some fancy tech i don't know about, you will not be able to select individual songs.
3.clean up and organize
- find the downloaded files
- i like to create folders for each album, and house those folders in a bigger music folder
- you should be able to right click to edit the properties of each song. click on details and make sure you have the right info for album, artist, track number, and so on...
- if everything went right, you can play these files in your mp3 application of choice!
optional: export to mp3 player
- this may work differently depending on what mp3 player you use
- for an ipod, download itunes onto your laptop
- you can drag your entire folder of music into the itunes library.
- connect the ipod with a usb cable to sync the library up.
&
here's a list of related links, including those previously mentioned
- i've been using ublock as my adblock for a few years. i've had 0 problems and it even does a great job at updating itself to keep up with ad updates. has various browser extensions, but watch out for fakes.
- MediaHuman has a great series of useful multimedia software.
- VirusTotal is a good website to check links and files for viruses, but i haven't used it a bunch