Getting MP3’s from Spotify (well sort of)
I love Spotify I don’t want to ruin it but there’s a lack of copyright protection with any streaming service if you’re prepared to resort to “old school” recording techiques (think of recording songs from the radio onto a cassette).
If you can hear the music playing through your computer then it’s possible to make a recording of that music. OK, it’s not as easy as downloading a track and in a way it’s probably more difficult than going to The Pirate Bay, using Limewire or your favourite NZB indexer. However if there’s a particular track you want and can’t find anywhere else this is a possible solution, a slightly long winded one at that.
Getting Set Up
First things first, you’ll want to install Audacity, visit the Audacity site and download the latest version, run through the usual setup and install process. Once finished download and run the Lame MP3 installer. This basically just places a copy of the lame_enc.dll on your system. You need this to be able to encode MP3 files.
Assuming these two installs have gone correctly you’ll need to make a couple of one-off settings. Fire up Audacity. Click on Edit > Preferences and make sure that your sound card is selected for the Playback and Recording Device, and that the Recording Channels is on “2 (Stereo)”.
Click on the “File Formats” tab and then the “Find Library” button, a message will pop-up talking about MP3s. Click “Yes”.
If you’ve installed the Lame MP3 installer with default settings, browse to “Program FilesLame for Audacity” and you should see “lame_enc.dll”. Select this file and click “Open”. Now click OK to confirm and close the Preferences window.
Last thing, make sure that along the top bar “Stereo Mix” is selected.
OK That’s Audacity set up to record. You won’t need to carry out any of the above steps again.
How to record a song to MP3
So presuming Audacity is already open. Run Spotify and find the song you want.
Don’t play the song yet, position the Spotify window and Audicity window next to each other.
OK, now press the record button and immediately afterwards press play on Spotify. You should see sound waves on audacity as it records. Let the song play to finish and click the stop button on Audacity.
OK, now in Audacity go to File > Export and MP3 choose a file name and click save, and confirm the export as MP3. Enter you ID3 tags if wanted. You’re MP3 will then be exported.
Tidying up
Audacity will also let you select areas of the recording to export as MP3, so if you wanted you could play and entire album and then select each section that represents a song and export it.
38 Responses to “Getting MP3’s from Spotify (well sort of)”
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hi sir i got interested in your website because you had this fact bout burning xbox iso file to nero (coz im quite in trouble burning xbox games),because of this i have some questions,can i still burn xbox iso via nero 9 (i noticed that in the picture that you’re used an older version of nero) plus is this really a valid xbox iso file? i have a copy of marvel vs capcom 2 xbox iso file via this site:
http://stupidwarezcom.blogspot.com/2008/05/marvel-vs-capcom-2-xbox-ntsc.html (unzip 2 files and i will have 2 iso files)
hope you’ll help me on this,pls email me for your answer. thanks and more power to your site
Hi
Yes you should be able to burn an ISO with Nero 9.
I’m not sure about the ISO in that link. As they’re RAR files they could extract to 1 ISO file. I haven’t downloaded it myself so I haven’t been able to try.
Maybe try asking over at the Gaming Evolved Forum: http://www.gamingevolved.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=3
[...] can use Audacity to record from Spotify. You probably need to play around with levels if you’re going to burn things [...]
Just followed the instructions and got it working within a few minutes – brilliant, thank you very much!
Last thing, make sure that along the top bar “Stereo Mix” is selected.
I cant select a thing there .. its grayed out
[...] guide to download from spotfiy Download MP3 from Spotify | Save MP3s from Spotify | Xbox 360 & Nintendo DS Blog [...]
Thank you
hi thanks alot for the information.
but in audacity, i cant select my audio card in the recording device bit.
ive installed the lame.dlc file all fine.
and also the stereo mix is blank and i cant select it.
please help. thanks so much
That’s odd, have you tried rebooting?
Same as above CANNOT Select the mixer, any ideas ??
Hi
Everything seems to have worked properly apart from the selecting sterio mix option. All I have on offer is Line in or Microphone. Is there something Ive missed?
i have the same problem, the area for stereo mix is grayed out and when selecting playback and output device, where the hell did you get soundmark thing from?
all i have is my speakers and my microphone.
Thanks Works Superb
Just follow the Directions above.
thank you
Stereo Mix/Wave Out is not available if you have Vista, and is also disabled on some sound cards. If it doesn’t work on yours, try connecting a double-ended headphones cable to the mic/headphones jacks and play around a bit with the input source (you’ll want to set it to microphone) to record. I guess the sound quality will be a tad less perfect, but this is the only workaround I know of
To all who didn’t find your sound card as a device for recording. Please check that the sound card is enabled (In Vista, Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Manage Audio Devices > Recording tab; right click on the icon of your sound card > Enable).
Then restart audacity, and try again the configuration. You will now see your audio card listed. Follow the steps in this post, and everything will work.
hi, i have the same problem the others already described. with vista, the stereo mix is grayed out in audacity. why is this? is this vista’s fault or audacity’s?
without this stereo mix setting it seems recording is only possible with an analog cable that connects speaker-out to mic-in.
i think vista really sucks
but thanks for the tips, will try them on windows xp.
heyy
this would work perfectly but nothing comes up on the devices list in recording so i cant record the music! why is nothing coming up???
miguel i cant find manage audio devices on the list!!!
Can someone put some instructions for Linux/Ubuntu users?
Omgh.. I think I have found new god for me
Thanks.. I wondered why I got crappy quality with that but that was ’cause I didn’t know about that I had only one channel in use…
[...] original post here: Download MP3 from Spotify | Save MP3s from Spotify | Xbox 360 & Nintendo DS Blog Share and [...]
heyyy, thanks it works a treat. at first the recording and playback settings didn’t really work cuz i have a plug in mic. but somehow i configured it so it records from my speakers instead without picking up surround sound
cheers, downloading All Time Low atm (Y) x
are you able to get cought (might be spelled wrong
) for this or is it leaagal?
No, they can’t detect you using recording software once the music has been streamed to your PC (BTW i’m not saying this is somethign you should do)
Hi!
I’m currently using XP, and though there’s nothing grayed out along the top bar, I only have “microphone”, “Line In” or “CD Player” as options – any ideas?
Would really appreciate any help…
Thanks!
wow, awesome
All there is left to do is to perfect the sound level to remove the most noise and record 
with some reading in the replys and some puzzling with settings, this works perfectly
thank you very much i was amazed that it actually works
Hi.
technically what u are doing here isn’t to “download” songs from spotify, u just copy what u hear, and save it.
is there a way to download the tracks in mp3 format? I know u can play songs in offline mode now, so the songs have to be saved somewhere on the harddrive. so if u find the music files (witch is prob not in mp3 format) u can maybe convert the files into playable mp3s.
wow, that was so easy and works perfectly
Converting the Spotify output to mp3 is a pretty bad idea. Spotify use OGG compression on their audio streams so you will be compressing the audio twice in two different formats. Much better to save to .WAV and convert to .FLAC.
I have Vista and it was posible in windows configuration activate mix and inactivate mic. It`s work now.
Don’t do this, you’ve got your free music now be content with that before starting the illegal trouble all over again.
Hi,
There are other progs that will record streams too. I personally use Total Recorder by High Criteria which comes in standard and professional versions. It costs a little but is an incredibly useful and versatile app to have.
Nice tip, I’ve also been getting the music I need with one of these apps for recording streams.I find it much useful and of course safer that using any torrents. I prefer Tunebite for downloading music from Spotify; since it records both audio and video streams from various sources I found it to come in handy all the time. Although I for one I prefer to save the recorded songs from Spotify as mp3’s, it’s easier for me to listen to that music on any device I need.
It’s actually pretty easy to use Tunebite for this job. If u need any help getting things started here’s also a little tutorial, that should do the trick for u:
http://audials.com/en/how_to_record_stream_capture_music_videos_movies_from/spotify.html
[...] Posted by voyagerious on January 26, 2010 Getting MP3’s from Spotify (well sort of) [...]
Can you not see the Stereo mix?
Right click on audacity and select prefence then compabiliti and chang it to windows xp
Thaaanks man! thanks !
love ya!<3
/julian
This isn’t working for me. I just get no sound coming through in Audacity (tried a few other recorders too).
If I play something via Windows Media Player (or VLC or Firefox), I can get the audio coming through in Audacity but if I play something in Spotify I get nothing.
If I play something in WMP and Spotify at the same time, and record in Audacity, I only get the audio from WMP recorded, even though I can hear both!