Hi Audacity Forum, My basic question is can Audacity record music from sources such as UTube, Spotify etc and save as mp3 or similar? If so how? I run on Windows 7. Thank you. Grahame.
Yes, but it is a copyright violation and a violation of your user agreements. As you know there is no “download” button… The artist gets paid (a very small amount) every time you stream a song, but of course they don’t get paid when you play your stolen copy.
On Windows 7 or later, choose [u]WASAPI (loopback)[/u] to record the sounds coming out of your soundcard.
If you want to export to MP3, you’ll need to install the optional [u]LAME MP3 encoder[/u].
P.S.
As you may know, MP3 (and AAC) is lossy compression. Most streaming services also use some kind of lossy compression. So, if you re-compress as MP3 you have 2 generations of lossy compression. You may not notice any quality loss but it’s something you should be aware of.
Also, when you edit an MP3 in Audacity (or any “regular” audio editor) it gets decompressed. If you then re-export to MP3, that’s another generation of lossy compression. So, if you will be doing editing (after exporting), export your temporary files to WAV or FLAC (or as Audacity project files) and try to minimize the number it times you lossy-compress.
Hi Doug,
Many thanks for your detailed reply. Sounds technical but looks like you have covered it pretty much. I’ll need to give this a go once I have understood the technical lingo. Also this is not stealing as you have alluded to. This is used for community purposes for which we pay an copyright royalty. Thanks.