Downloading songs from MySpace

Post by **^rooker** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:06 pm

Based on instructions from Using Firebug to download songs from Myspace (Devlounge).

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Disclaimer:

I believe in the freedom of information, but I respect the artist's work.
So if you like their music, consider buying it. Especially if they're not so famous.
They'll probably use your money to buy new equipment or finance a tour, so you'll have more to hear from them!

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1) You need to use FireFox.
(Luckily, Firefox is cross-platform, so this will work for Linux, Mac and Windows)

2) Get the web developer plugin "Firebug" (you will need to restart FireFox before you can use it)

3) Go to the MySpace page where the artist has unfortunately forgotten to offer you the "download"

4) Use FireBug's search (upper right corner of the Firebug plugin) to search for the word "mp3"

5) You should find a text block like this:

Code: Select all

<object id="mp3player" width="450" height="345" border="0" viewastext="" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab##version=8,0,0,0">
<param value="11906" name="_cx"/><param value="9128" name="_cy"/>
<param value="" name="FlashVars"/>
<param value="http://lads.myspace.com/music/musicplayer.swf?n=aHR0c...geDo0YPqml+4bScg==&u=LTE=&a=0&d=ODcyODg0M14xMTY5OTI1ODIz" name="Movie"/>
<param value="http://lads.myspace.com/music/musicplayer.swf?n=aHR0c...uk7nGie1A==&u=LTE=&a=0&d=ODcyODg0M14xMTY5OTI1ODIz" name="Src"/>
<param value="Window" name="WMode"/>
....
<param value="1" name="SeamlessTabbing"/>
<embed width="450" height="345" align="" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" name="mp3player" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" quality="high" src="http://lads.myspace.com/music/musicplayer.swf?n=aHR0cDovL211c2ljLm15c3BhY2UuY29t&t=CiR...vLUDqe6CA==&u=LTE=&a=0&d=ODcyODg0M14xMTY5OTI1ODIz"/>
</object>

The important part is in the last line:

Code: Select all

src="http://lads.myspace.com/music/musicplayer.swf?n=aHR0cDovL211c2ljLm15c3BhY2UuY29t&t=CiRg+...vLUDqe6CA==&u=LTE=&a=0&d=ODcyODg0M14xMTY5OTI1ODIz"

Copy the "src" URL to your clipboard and open it in Firefox.
You should now see an "enlarged" version of the MySpace flash player.

6) Enable Firebug again for this new page and select the "Net" tab (it's in the 2nd row on the left side of Firebug, together with "Console HTML CSS Script DOM)
The "Net" view of Firebug shows you which files are loaded by the site - this will include the song the flash player loads.

7) Now select the song you'd like to download within the MySpace flash player.
You should now see a new entry in Firebug's Net list, probably starting with "http://cache..." and a reasonable filesize for an MP3 audiofile (a few MB?).
Right-click on that entry and select "Copy Location".

Create a new/blank textfile and rename it to something like "myspace.html" and put the following code into that file:

Code: Select all

<html>
<body>
<a href="">download</a>
</body>
</html>

(You can reuse this file several times)

9) Now paste the previously copied cache-URL in between the "" of the link tag (<a href="">) and save the file. It will look somewhat like this afterwards:

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<html>
<body>
<a href="http://cache10-music01.myspacecdn.com/78/std...a=0">download</a>
</body>
</html>

10) Now open your "myspace.html" file in Firefox and right-click on "download" and select "Save target as...".

That's it. you're done.