Links to audio files¶
The easyest way to provide audio on a web page is to create a link to an audio file.
In Firefox you can alway see the target of a link in the status bar when you move the mousecursor over the link (the cursor changes from the usual arrow symbol to a hand symbol). If the link target is an audio file, it’s very easy to download the file.
Firefox may be configured to download audio files when you click on the link. But in most cases it will start playing the audio file. To prevent Firefox from playing the audio file and get it downloaded, it’s mostly necessary to right-click on the link and then click on Save Link As… in the appearing context menu.
Example: Downoad a directly linked audio file from Awesome Tapes from Africa¶
- Go to the web page http://http://awesometapesfromafrica.blogspot.com/
- Find a link to an audio file by moving the mousecursor over the page and looking to the status bar when it’s symbol changes to a hand
- right-click on the link to get the context menu
- click Save Link As… in the context-menu.
- In the appearing window you can change the name of the file and the folder where it will be saved.
- click Save to start the download
Links to playlists¶
Another way to provide audio on a web page are links to playlists.
Playlists are just small textfiles which contain informations about the file(s)/stream(s) that shall be played.
If you want to download the file(s) / rip the stream(s) instead of playing the file(s)/stream(s), you have to get the information out of the playlist. To do that, you have to download the playlist, open it with a texteditor and then copy the URL of the file you want to download / stream you want to rip.
If you found an URL to a file, you can try to paste it to the adress bar in Firefox and press enter. But in many cases Firefox will again try to play the file. To avoid this when you don’t have a link to right-click, it is necessary to install the firefox-extension Get File and then use File > Get a File > Download to start the download.
Example: Download a playlist from http://versionist.com/ and download the referenced audio file.¶
- Go to the web page http://http://versionist.com/
- Find a link to a playlist by moving the mousecursor over one of the play-symbols (a box appears with the message “Stream HiFi Song”)
- right-click on the link to get the context menu
- click Save Link As… in the context-menu.
- In the appearing window you can change the name of the file and the folder where it will be saved.
- click Save to start the download
- click on Places and open the folder where you saved the playlist.
- right-click on the saved playlist file to get the context menu
- Move the mousecursor over the context menu entry Open With
- click Open With Other Application… in the appeared sub-menu.
- Select a simple text editor like Mousepad or mEdit
- Deselect the checkbox Use as default for this kind of file
- click Open to open the playlist in the selected texteditor
- Look for the URL of the file you want to download (if you don’t know, which to take, usually the first
http://.....will be the best). - Copy the URL to the Clipboard by pressing Strg + C
- Go back to Firefox.
- click File > Get a File > Download to start the download
This way will not work with radio steams – mostly because they never end. If the download with Get File doesn’t work, you should try to rip the stream with streamripper.
Ripping audio streams with streamripper¶
Audio streams are mostly started with the help of playlists. To rip a stream you have to get the URL of the stream itself first (see Example: Download a playlist …’ 2-15). Then you can rip it with streamripper.
streamripper «URL» -r
The option -r creates a relay server on port 8000 . With this relay server you can listen to the stream you’re recording on http://localhost:8000.
Example: 1.FM - ReggaeTrade
