Record Music from your Computer instead of Downloading

Everyone has those super popular songs that they just want to listen to while they are still popular. I don't feel like paying for these songs just to listen to them for a couple weeks and then forget about them. These are the kind of songs I would download to have when I wanted to listen to them. Don't get me wrong I buy a lot music probably more than people who don't download music, but there's always a handful of songs I want and don't want to pay for.

Downloading music is wrong and it comes with the whole getting sued thing, which is not fun. So if you want to get those pop songs that are great fun for a couple weeks without paying for them then there's a simple and effective way of going about it. I use two pieces of software to effectively record and add songs to iTunes.

The first program you will need is something to record your system audio. There are many applications out there that can do this, the one I use for Mac is called WireTap. It can tap into a specific program's audio and record it and the music has a pretty good quality. The program can even record and split an audio clip based on duration or silence which allows you to record several songs in a row and have the program split them up for you.

Now you have to find a website that has the song in it's entirety in order to record it. I like going to lala or ilike to listen to the full version of a song for free. They only let you play the song for free once but you can add it to an online playlist for a couple cents each. You can also clear LaLa's cookies in your browser so you can replay full versions of songs again. You will have to do this everytime you want listen to the full version of a song once you have played it. LaLa also lets you make a playlist of songs that you have not played yet which will play back to back allowing you to record them all in a row. Youtube is also a good place if the song has a music video. There are many other websites some probably better than the ones I mentioned. Just do a little research and I'm sure you will find the song you want.

Now that you have the song recorded you have to put it into iTunes. If you only do one song at a time putting the song title and information might not be that big of a deal. If you do a whole album or several songs you might want to get a program called Tune Up. Tune Up will find a song's title information using the wave signature just like shizam does on the iPhone. It will also get the album art and other track information.

Tune Up and WireTap are both Mac applications but there are sure to be Windows equivalents that can accomplish the same result. This a non-downloading way to get your favorite songs into iTunes with all there appropriate information with little effort. It will still take more time than downloading the songs but at least you don't leave a downloading paper trail.