If you are not aware, the FLV format is the most commonly used video format in the web. The FLV format is very popular and used by YouTube, Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other video & information websites.

FLV To MP3 Converter allows you to extract the audio component of the video and convert it into a MP3 file. Other than FLV, it also supports file formats like MP4, MPG, FLV, WMV, MOV (for input) and MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, and FLAC (for output).

Grab the software while it is still available.

This giveaway will be closed on Oct 25th, 2011.

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Creating a Ringtone

Before we begin, first head over to the Android Market and download the ringtone maker “Ringdroid” (market link).

After you have installed the app, launch it and you will see a list of all the audio files on your device (SD card and internal storage).

All the files on my device are fairly standard MP3 files so I can view all of them, however according to the FAQ, Ringdroid only supports MP3, WAV, AAC, MP4, 3GPP, and AMR files. Ensure the audio file you wish to use as a ringtone is in one of the acceptable formats before copying it over.

If you have a long list of files, you can use the search option. Alternatively, you can make a recording and use it as a ringtone by clicking the “Record New” button.

Simply record whatever you wish by hitting the “Record” button and then save it.

Once you have selected (or recorded) your audio file, you will be able to select the portion of the file to use as a ringtone.

You can manipulate the sliders to select the portion of the audio file you wish to use as a ringtone. You can pause/play the track to ensure that you have selected the appropriate position. Once you have decided the portion of the song you want, tap the floppy disc icon to save your creation.

You will have the option to choose the name of the ringtone and also select the type of audio file you wish to save as.

Here you can decide what type of file you want to use your creation as.

Once you hit “Save” you will have the option to assign the ringtone to a specific contact, make the ringtone the default ringtone or just exit the menu.

That is all, your ringtone will now be ready to use.

Applying a Ringtone

To set the ringtone, navigate to the “Sound” preference in the main settings of your device and select “Phone ringtone“. You should be able to see your newly created ringtone.

Deleting a Ringtone

To delete a ringtone, simply head back to Ringdroid and find the ringtone you wish to delete. Then select the down arrow.

This will pop open a menu giving you the option to delete the ringtone.

That’s it you can now make custom ringtones on Android!

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Overview

First, let’s explain a little bit about exactly what Cloud Player can do. The free service gives you 5GB of storage space as part of the Amazon Cloud Drive. Cloud Drive alone is all you need to just store files, and it’s Cloud Player which makes it worth the effort for music. You’ve got your choice between a web-based player or an Android app. This article will focus on the web based portion, as it applies to all readers.

To get your 5GB claimed, just head over to Amazon and log in/sign up (as of this post, the signing up is available for US customers only).

Adding Music

For starters, you’re a little bit limited in what will work with the Cloud Player. It’ll work with DRM-free MP3 or AAC files, no Vorbis, FLAC, etc. If you’ve got DRMed music, you’re out of luck. But then again, you probably already know that.

The “proper” way to work with this service is to use the Amazon MP3 Uploader, which is an Adobe Air application. It’s not the only way, however, which we’ll cover in a moment. For those who wish to use the uploader, you’ll be asked to install it when setting up your Cloud Player account.

It will scan your computer for music on startup, but you do have the option to stop the scan and manually select the music of your choice, or optionally import from software such as iTunes. Unfortunately, it will attempt to scan your drive again the next time you launch the uploader. And the next. And the next…

If you can’t or won’t use the MP3 Uploader, there’s always the plain old Cloud Drive uploader. Just log into the Amazon Cloud Drive just as you would the Cloud Player. Upload the files to your music folder or subfolder of your choice.

And they’ll be available in the Cloud Player web interface. Speaking of which…

Cloud Player Web Interface

Now that you’ve got you music up, its time to do something with it. On the left you’ve got a navigation panel similar to many local music player applications where you can view your collection by Artist, Genre, etc. Cloud Player even handles the fetching of album art (if it can).

Playlists are fully supported as well, and items are added to the playlist by dragging them from any browsing view and dropping onto the playlist name.

The Non-Free Experience

If you wish to go beyond the free service, you can purchase new tunes from the MP3 Store or some additional capacity to hold it all. Amazon worked in some pretty tempting bonuses as well. For example, if you purchase any MP3 album from their web store, the album is automatically added to your Cloud Drive and your drive capacity is expanded to 20GB for free (for a year).

If you’re interested in expanding your storage space without necessarily buying an album, the prices are as follows (as of the time of this writing)

5 GB FREE
20 GB $20.00 / year
50 GB $50.00 / year
100 GB $100.00 / year
200 GB $200.00 / year
500 GB $500.00 / year
1000 GB $1,000.00 / year

Conclusion

Until Google and Apple launch their theoretical competitors, there’s little basis for comparison for the combined Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. This author is still getting used to the idea of Amazon as a leading edge tech company instead of just an online retailer, but to date their cloud offerings have been generally well received. These two new services are certainly impressive in their simplicity, and both do precisely the job they were designed for and seem to do it well. It would be nice to see some external APIs become available to allow things like local client integration or drive mapping, but that may be in the works. For now, Cloud Player seems to be an extremely simple and capable tool. Often when writing software reviews, we try the application, write about it, and move on. This time, I think I’ll really use this in my daily life. At least until something better comes along.

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Download and install MP3Gain

Open MP3Gain. Click on Add Files to add your music files. If all your songs are sorted into its Album folders, click Add Folders instead.

The default target volume is 89dB, but you can change it to your preferences. If you want it to be louder, change to a higher value (say 95dB).

There are two different modes that you can use to analyze the tracks.

Track mode – MP3Gain analyzes each track’s volume and correct them to match the Target Volume. This is preferable if all your songs are of the same genre.

Album mode -Different albums have different sound settings, so it is not a good choice to normalize all songs to the same target volume. The Album mode corrects the overall volume of the album to the target volume, yet maintaining the volume differences between the mp3 in the album. This is preferable if you have various albums, all of different genre.

Click on Track Analysis (or Album Analysis). It might take some time, depending on the size of your music library. The information will then be displayed on the screen.

Click on the Track Gain (or Album Gain) to repair the tracks. Note that MP3Gain does not re-encode the music files to make the changes. It simply embed a meta-tag into the track. The music application that plays the tracks will read the meta-tag and make the adjustment accordingly.

Once the changes have been made, you can sync your music back to your MP3 player and enjoy the differences.

At any point of time, if you feel that the volume is too loud/soft, you can repeat the same process with a different value of target volume. Remember that the software does not make changes to your MP3 files, so it doesn’t matter how many times you change it.

Also, if you want to restore back to the original settings, you can go to Modify Gain -> Undo Gain Changes to restore it back.

Is this useful to you? Let’s us know in the comments.

Image credit: rt44man

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We have earlier discussed how to Rip audio from a YouTube video using uTubeRipper. But just in case you want to extract audio from a video file stored in your computer, this tutorial will be useful.

Although there are quite a good number of websites, tools and software available to convert a video file to audio, I found Pazera Free Audio extractor the simplest and most user friendly. I don’t recomend using web services to convert videos to audio because you have to first upload the video in their servers and then wait for some hours for the conversion to take place. When the conversion is over, you will again have to download the converted audio file. This is very time consuming and in some cases, the results are not very accurate.

Extract Audios From Videos

The best thing about this audio converter is that it’s a portable application. You don’t have to install anything and can use the application from a removable drive on any computer.

1. Extract the package and double click AudioExtractor.exe to start Pazera Audio extractor.

2. Click “Add files” on the left top of the application window to add video files to the main panel

If you want to convert a lot of files in one go, hold down the control button and select the files one by one. These files will be added to the converter’s queue and will be processed one by one.

2.  Specify an Output Directory: Now specify an output directory where the audio files will be saved after the conversion. Select the radio button placed just underneath the Output directory section and browse to the location of the output folder.

3. Selecting the audio profile: Now you have to select the audio profile for extraction. Pazera comes with a wide number of preconfigured audio profiles which is accessible from the profiles dropdown, as shown below:

You can choose to extract the original audio stream which comes with the video or choose the default encoder settings. There are also profiles which will allow you to extract the audio and then convert it to a specific bit rate e.g 64kbps, 128 kbps and so on. This will be useful if you want to perform multimedia editing on the generated audio file. If you want to just hear to the audio and do not care about the resampling, choose “MP3 stereo – Best quality”

4. Selecting the Output format: You can select the output format of the audio from the Output format section in Pazera Audio converter:

There are quite a few options available, you can choose between MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC and OGG Formats. From this section you can adjust the volume of the audio as well – use the volume slider and drag it back and forth to increase or decrease the volume of the audio.

This feature is useful because some videos have very low volume and you can barely listen to the audio. You can boost the audio directly from the convertor and don;t have to use another application altogether.

5. Set the Desired Offset: This feature allows you to set an offset time for the audio. Let’s say you want to skip the boring 2 minute intro of a video and want only a portion of the audio to extract. You can achieve this by defining the start and end offset of the video file from “Advanced settings’ as shown below:

This is extremely useful when you want to trim the audio to particular sections and do not want to use another software to cut the audio file and stitch them together.

Once you are done tweaking all the settings, hit the “Convert” button and the application will start extracting the audio from all the video files and save them in the defined output folder of your choice.

Have you ever used an Audio extractor? Please share your ideas in the comments section.

Image credit: Tibby is finally back!

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Getting Exaile

To install Exaile, Ubuntu Lucid users can click here or use the Ubuntu Software Center to fetch the exaile package. For other distributions, check the Exaile website.

Multiple Playlists

This is a feature I can’t believe is missing from so many media players. Exaile allows you to keep several playlists open at the same time and drag files between them. This is immensely useful for those of us who like to create playlists for compilation albums or specific occasions.

Smart Playlists

Exaile supports compound search filters so you can generate playlists based on certain criteria on the fly. If I want a random selection of 10 songs from all VAST albums, except Music for People, I could specify that like this:

And each time I load this playlist into Exaile, the contents are generated on the fly.

File Browsing

Of all the annoyances I have with music players, there is none more infuriating to me than the program’s insistence on reorganizing my music into its own arbitrary library. I know many people like to browse their music based on tags, and that’s all well and good, but I have my files sorted on disk for a reason. Any music player that does not allow me to access my music based on disk location as easily as by tag is immediately junk to me. Exaile understands this, and leaves a perfectly functional file browser handy.

Stream Browsing

Even a huge music collection can’t have everything you’ll ever want to listen to, so it’s handy to have stream support built right into your player. Exaile has an extensive list of streams built in, and you can add your own with the Add Station button at the top.

Speed

Exaile isn’t the fastest player out there, not by a long shot, but when compared to many of the larger players it seems to fly. In my experience, it’s much faster than Amarok and Songbird and better integrates into the Gnome desktop.

Conclusion

For me, Exaile is faster than Amarok, more useful than Audacious, smarter than VLC, and better organized than Rhythmbox. I can’t claim it’s my dream player, but it’s the closest thing I’ve yet found. For what it is, I’ll pay Exaile the highest compliment I’ve given a music player in years: it doesn’t suck.

If you’re curious about the software that has failed me, the following music player programs have all been tried and rejected for one reason or another: Amarok, Audacious, Songbird, Rhythbox, XMMS, VLC, and Banshee. Amarok had it closest, then broke itself with later versions.

If you’ve used Exaile or would like to share your complaints with music players, sound off in the comments below.

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Super MP3 Download is one great software (for Windows) that allows you to do what you love best: download MP3 for free. And yes, you can find the Top 40 Hits here, and songs from many other genres and categories. In fact, there are more than 100 million songs available for you to search (and download), so there is a very high chance of you finding the songs you want.

MP3 search – by title, artists or albums

After you have installed the software, you can easily perform a search either by the song title, artists or its album name. Super MP3 Download is quick to fetch the result from its database, and I am happy to find that it brings back the songs I want at the first search for more than 95% of the time

Preview the songs before you download

There are many great many features in Super MP3 Download, but the one that I love best is the ability to preview and listen to a song before I download. After you have performed a search, from the search result, you can simply highlight an entry and get it streaming directly from the Web. If you are satisfied with the quality, you can then proceed to download the song. Now, for those who are afraid of the legal issue (by downloading the songs), or your hard disk is running out of space, you can also use this as an online radio where you get your favorite songs to play non-stop.

Advanced search

I have no use for the Advanced Search because the basic search function is already good enough for me. But if you are looking for more specific piece of music, perhaps the unplugged version of “Hotel California”, then the Advanced Search will be useful for you. Similiar to the basic search, you can query the database via the song title, artists, album name or all of them. In addition, there is an “Edition” field where you can choose the edition you want.

More ways to discover new songs

The Hot Songs and the Categories sections are two great place to discover new songs, or to zoom in on your searches. As its name implies, the Hot Songs section shows the Top 10 songs in USA. There is also a link for you to expand the list to Top 100 songs. The Categories section allows you to narrow down your search to the Genre of the songs. When you click on any of the category, it will show a list of the popular songs from that category.

Extra features that I hope to see

While this is already a great software that can save you time and effort to search and download MP3, we can definitely benefit with even more features. Here’s what I hope to see:

Search for songs by the music

There are times when I have heard a nice song in the bar, but I have completely no idea what’s the name of the song or the artists. All I can do is to record the music with my phone and get Shazam or Tunatics to identify the song. Now, if SuperMP3 allows us to perform a search with bits and pieces of the song itself, it will be great.

Support for multiple platforms

I am not shy to hide that I am using three different OS in my three computers at home. I have Windows, Mac as well as Linux. In my opinion, Super MP3 Download is not a complicated software and it should be easy to implement one for Mac and Linux.

Super MP3 Download comes in two version: Free and Pro. The free version allows you to download only 5 songs per day and you can only download 1 song at a time. The pro version comes in at $39.95 for a lifetime license or $1.66 per month if you just want to try it out. The Pro version removes all limits. You can download unlimited songs simultaneously at any moments.

Super MP3 Download

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With the abundance of music related websites in existence, I had to choose a particular set of criteria for which sites to include. To be included in this list, a site had to provide free MP3 downloads (not just streaming) for a significant portion of their available music. Also, downloads had to be available to all, without registration. This is by no means an exhaustive list of such sites, and if you have a favorite not listed here I would welcome comments and links at the end of the article.

1. MP3.com Free Music Directory

Among the oldest music download sites still in existence, MP3.com has gone through a few phases in the past. When I first used it about 10 years ago, it was populated with independent musicians and used as a place to share, download and buy their music. These days it has morphed into a more commercial enterprise, hosting mostly streams and including a large list of high-profile musicians. Few of the well-known tracks offer MP3 downloads, but there’s still a wide variety of indie artists who do.

2. Public Doman 2ten

If you like older recordings of classic artists like Leadbelly, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday then this is the place for you. The selection isn’t very large, but it’s got tracks you’d have a hard time finding anywhere else. It seems to focus mainly on blues recordings but has a fair amount of jazz, swing, and even some classical.

3. GarageBand

Were it not for persistent troubles with their streaming software, I would probably list GarageBand.com as my favorite of the sites listed here. They’ve got an extensive list of genres to choose from, a large collection or artists and tracks, streaming “radio” to discover new music, and reviews for many of the bands and tracks available. Not all tracks have MP3 downloads, but many. Among the sites reviewed here, GarageBand has, in my opinion, the best “one-stop” music experience. You can choose a “radio” playlist that will pick songs from within your chosen genre, find and stream individual tracks, or of course download the MP3s.

As hinted earlier, the only thing holding me back from giving GarageBand a glowing review is their stream player. Perhaps it’s just me, but in the weeks I’ve been trying it has not yet properly played a single track on Linux or Windows XP.

4. Free Music Archive

With GarageBand’s streaming difficulties, I’d pick the Free Music Archive as my favorite of the sites listed here. It’s got a fairly wide selection, clean simple site design, and allows browsing by genre. Much of the music available on FMA is licensed under Creative Commons, so it can also be a great source for samples and tracks to use in remixing. Speaking of remixing…

5. ccMixter

This site is unlike any of the previous ones, not just in content but in purpose. The idea behind ccMixter is that users can post tracks or individual samples for others to download and remix or re-purpose. For example, you can download individual vocal tracks with no music, and create your own guitar line to match with it. If you choose, you can then re-upload your new and improved version to share with others. Someone may take your version, add some drum & bass and make a club mix. Not that that’s necessarily an improvement.

Do you know any other useful websites with free, legal downloads? Let us know in the comments section!

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So, what is the problem, you say? “I can still listen to all this music on my iPod/iPhone”. “I can still use iTunes to manage all my DRM music”.

DRM ( Digital Rights Management) is a term used to describe procedures which are taken to prevent unauthorized use of the media in question. So, for example, if you have music with DRM purchased from the iTunes store, you will not be able to play them on any media player, other than Apple’s. You will also not be able to convert these files to the MP3 format because Apple, under DRM, doesn’t give you the rights to do so.

But, do not despair. There are ways to get around this and we’ll be teaching you exactly how to do that in this post.

There are generally two ways to remove DRM from iTunes music. The first method, which we’ll discuss here, involves the fact that Apple doesn’t let you convert protected (DRM) music to MP3, but it lets you burn them on a CD/DVD, so that’s one way of getting the music out of the system.

The second method involves using software utilities to strip out the DRM from the music. We’ll be covering this method in a later post.

Exporting DRM laced music to a CD/DVD

Insert a blank CD/DVD in the drive and open iTunes on your computer. Select the File->New Playlist option (or press Ctrl+N). Give a name to the new playlist.

Now, the next step is to select all the files that you want to remove DRM from and drag them to the playlist that you just created.

Now that you have all the tracks you want on the CD/DVD media, right-click the playlist and select the option to “Burn playlist to Disc”.

iTunes will now present you a dialogue box where you can select the kind of CD/DVD that you want to burn. Make sure you select the Audio CD option.

iTunes should now start burning the music to the CD and it’ll let you knows once it’s finished.

Importing music from a CD/DVD

Now, select the Edit->Preferences option and under the General tab, click on Import Settings.

Select the MP3 Encoder from the drop down list and you’re all set to import the track on the Audio CD that you just wrote as MP3 files.

Remove the CD from the drive, and insert it back again. iTunes will prompt you to import the tracks from the CD to it’s own database. Let it do so and at the end of the import process, you’ll have new MP3 tracks void of any DRM.

Enjoy your DRM free music.

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One of the iTunes features that I like most is the rating system. Users can tag any song with one to five stars based on their preferences, and users can sort or filter the playlist based on the rating. A quick glance at someone’s iTunes display and you can clearly tell which songs he/she likes and dislikes.

The rating system really is a great idea; but, and this is a big but (no pun intended), the bigger the song list, the more difficult for users to give rating to each and every song. Can you imagine editing 2376 songs one by one? That’s the size of a tiny part of my current song list. (And I don’t know anybody who has less than 100 songs on their list).

AutoRate to the rescue

Luckily, there’s an application called AutoRate which can help iTunes users to rate their songs. This app tries to ‘guess’ user’s listening preferences and give rate to each song automatically by looking at how often each track is played and how many times each track is skipped.

The formula uses a combination of play and skip frequency (averaged out over the life of each track), and the play and skip count. Tracks that are frequently skipped are penalised, while often-played tracks are given a higher rating.

Both the track play count and skip count are used in conjunction with the length of time each track has been in your library to determine, on a relative basis, how much you like each track. Ratings become dynamic and change with your taste in music following how you listen to your songs.

That is why you will get no rating for the track that has never been played.

The Simplicity

Before using AutoRate, please make sure that you have iTunes version 7 and above, and Mac OS X 10.5 (and above). If those requirements are met, download and install the app.

The usage is simple: you just open it, and click the “Begin” button. It will analyze your playlist, then assign the ratings automatically based on the result.

There are some adjustments that you can make via the Preferences, such as:
- which playlist folders to be given ratings to. (General)

- how would you like to set up the rating system. (Rating)

- whether to use full star or half star rating. (Advanced)

With AutoRate, my iTunes playlist has grown a little bit more mature without me having to do the hard work.

One last note, you would want to run AutoRate every once in a while to keep the rating system up to date.

Have you use AutoRate? Or do you have other alternatives of similar app? Please share using the comment below.

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GNUMP3d – The GNU Streaming MP3 / Media Server

Platform: *nix, Windows, OSX
Browser/Client Player: Client
Supported formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis
Configuration: Text File

So far, I think GNUMP3d is my favorite simple music streaming application. According to the website it runs on Windows as well as the UNIX type systems you’d expect from GNU. I’ve only tested it on Linux and it’s been a breeze.

To install GNUMP3d, you just download and extract the tarball from the GNUMP3d website, and run

make install

Configuration is done through a plain text file, instructions are provided on the website.

Once it’s up and running, you point a web browser to the address you’ve set up (like http://localhost:8888) and you should see a screen similar to the screenshot above. From here you can click directories or individual tracks. Each click will result in the server generating a playlist file (.m3u) which your host computer will open in whatever media player you have set up for M3U files. I tested it through VLC but the website notes that others like WinAmp and XMMS work as well.

Another handy feature found in GNUMP3d which seems to be rare with this type of software is that it allows not only streaming but plain downloads of the music files. You can download the MP3 as easily as you can stream it.

One thing I felt was missing from GNUMP3d was user access control. I’d like to be able to set permissions so that only those with the correct username and password can access my music collection. The README stated that similar functionality had been there for a previous release, but had been removed as it didn’t really do anything to improve security.It did, however, let me restrict connections based on IP address. This worked well for me as I intend to stream my home music collection from work, so I set it to only accept connections from my employer’s IP range.

Vibe Streamer

Platform: Windows (also reported to work through Wine)
Browser/Client Player: Browser
Supported formats: MP3
Configuration: Graphical

Vibe is the music streamer I’ve tested most in Windows.  Like GNUMP3d, it runs a mini webserver which gives you a browsable list of available music files. Unlike GNUMP3d, it is set up through a normal Windows graphical program. Another difference is that Vibe uses an in-browser player to play the music, instead of relying on a client-side program such as Winamp or VLC.

The one feature I really liked about Vibe was that it was very easy to set the server to only accept connections from someone with a proper username and password. It didn’t seem to use HTTPS so I can’t make any claims on how much that really improves security, but it’s a nice feature. It would at least stop someone from casually strolling on to my server and using up my bandwidth.

Icecast

Platform: Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris
Browser/Client Player: Client
Supported formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis
Configuration: XML file

Of the software I reviewed for this article, Icecast was by far the most difficult to set up. Configuration is done through a XML file using a lot of unfamiliar terminology. I read over the docs on the website which clarified a few of the options, but there was a lot I had to figure out on my own.

Icecast streams music like a regular radio station, with a certain selection of music being beamed out to the world. You don’t have the control over music selection you have with the other options I’ve covered here. This is good from the server side, as you only need to send out a single stream which all listeners will hear. For my purposes, I just want the stream for myself while at work, and I’d like to choose my music selection as I go, so Icecast doesn’t meet my personal needs very well. If you intend to stream music to many listeners, the Icecast style might be the best way to go.

Apache

Platform: Just about everything
Browser/Client Player: Either
Supported formats: Anything
Configuration: Apache config is a BIG topic better handled elsewhere

That’s right, the plain old Apache webserver is all you really need to stream/download your music. It’s probably not the BEST option in most circumstances, but it’ll do the trick. You simply install Apache according to the instructions for your operating system, and drop your music files in the web folder. That’s it. You won’t have any nice graphics, no playlist support, nothing fancy just a list of files that can be clicked to download or stream, depending on client/server configuration.

IMPORTANT – As with any internet-connected server, be very careful about what you place for public access. Any of the software listed here could potentially have some kind of security flaw. On top of that, it’s probably a bad idea to host copyrighted music to the whole internet. Stream at your own risk.

What other software do you use to stream music over the Web? Share with us in the comments.

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On the other side, the convenience of digital music raises another problem: digital file management. Take a peek into your music collection, how many files have their names and information right? Maybe it’s far less than a half. If your collection consists of less than a hundred MP3s, the process of tidying up the wrong names would be a breeze. But everybody I know has thousands of tunes in their library.

Tidying Up With Tagr

Luckily, the “organizing MP3 collection” process could be simplified with the help of a free app called Tagr. This little app (only about 2.3 Mb) claims to be able to edit information such as a song’s artist, title, or album cover. Tagr also allows you to control the way your files are named. Tagr also features integration with discogs.com that allows you to search for album information and artwork and apply it to your songs.

To use Tagr, users simply drag and drop their MP3s into the Tagr windows to be edited. Dropping down an entire album is possible (and advisable), so the user can add or edit the information in a bulk. Just select all MP3 files and user can tinker with the attributes.

There are sets of editing menu available:
- Numbering: to edit the tracks numbers. Users can choose to have a leading zeros before the track numbers (01, 02, 03, and so on) and the track counts behind the track numbers (01/18, 02/18, 03/18, and so on).

- File Naming: Users can edit the original file name to include either: Artist and Title, Track and Title, or Track, Artist and Title.

- Capitalization: Users can choose to change the track names into: Title Case, UPPERCASE, or lowercase.

- All In One: do all the above at once to all the file selected.

As an addition, users can add attributes such as Artist, Album, Genre, Year, Comment and album art to the selected files. These attributes will be part of the file, and users should not be afraid that they would be lost – even if the files are moved to another computer.

Just be sure to hit the “Save to Disk” icon after you change the MP3s information.

The Minus Side

IMHO, here are the few things where Tagr could be improved:
- I tried to drag and drop songs from iTunes and failed. Maybe the future version of Tagr could support this. iTunes might be a superior player, but it still has some limitation such as adding album art. It would be nice if we could do it easily with the help of Tagr.
- To retrieve songs’ information and art from the Discogs.com to be applied to the songs, users have to go to coverflow menu. This additional step is not described clearly and lazy users could get frustrated trying to locate it. Maybe adding a search box and a right click menu to access this feature would greatly appreciated by the users.

So, in conclusion, Tagr is a nice little helper in managing names and tags of MP3 files, but it could be improved.

Have you tried Tagr? Or do you use other application to manage your MP3s? Share your thoughts using the comment below.

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• Play Your Music Anywhere with Amazon’s Brand New Cloud Player

While the iTunes store gives you access to a wide range of music and a one-click no-fuss purchase experience, it does come with a DRM restriction that prevents you from playing your favorite track on other devices. On the other hand, Amazon enables you to buy DRM-free high quality MP3 track, but you have to put in the extra effort to go to the Amazon site and search through the extensive database for that particular track. Now, wouldn’t it be great if you can combine the best of both World – search for the song in iTunes and buy the track in Amazon?

Advantageous MP3 is a mini iTunes script that is able to detect which song you are searching at iTunes store and brings you directly to the purchase site at Amazon. It is only 60kb in size and supports both Mac and Windows iTunes.

Download Advantageous MP3 for Mac here. Windows user can download it here.

Install the downloaded file.

Open your iTunes. You should see the Advantageous MP3 icon at the menu bar.

Now, go to your iTunes store and search for the song/album you want.

Click on the Advantageous MP3 icon and select Get MP3 From Amazon.

[For Mac users only] At the first run, it will prompt you to activate the GUI display at the Universal Access menu.

Check the box beside Enable access for assistive devices.

Back to your iTunes, click on the Get MP3 from Amazon again.

This time, your default browser will pop up and bring you to the album purchase page in Amazon. Proceed on to buy your MP3.

Once you have finished downloading your MP3, simply drag and drop it into iTunes to sync it with your iPod

That’s it.

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Often, you have heard a rare nice song from a particular YouTube video and you wish you could just save that song (without the video) into your hard disk. Well, in Ubuntu, you can use UTube Ripper to extract audio from YouTube video and save it as mp3 file.

UTube Ripper is an application that works exclusively on Linux. It’s useful to download and convert YouTube videos in a simple and efficient way. While there are many online sites that can take the YouTube url, extract the audio and let you download the mp3 file, it gives you little room for customization. UTube Ripper provides more choices and allows you to set the conversion sample rate and bit rate. It can also convert the flv file to MPEG or avi video format.

Install UTube Ripper

Download the UTube Ripper deb file to your desktop.

Double click the file to start installation. This will fetch and install all its dependencies.

Once installed, go to Applications -> Internet -> Utube ripper.

Now, on http://www.youtube.com, find your favorite video and the song that you want to extract. Copy the exact url and paste it to the text field in the ‘Utube Video URL’ section

. Press ‘Download’ to start download the flv file to your computer. The downloaded file will be saved as video.flv under the /home/yourusername/.utube folder.

To extract mp3, check ‘Rip audio only‘ under the ‘Convert FLV’ section. Click ‘Browse’, navigate to the /.utube folder and select the file video.flv. Click ‘Convert’ to start the conversion. The mp3 file will be saved as audio.mp3. Rename the mp3 file and move it to other folder (else it will be overwritten in the next conversion).

To adjust the sampling rate and bit rate, click on the ‘Setting’ . You can customize the video output type, audio output type, audio sample rate, audio bit rate, video bit rate, video screen resolution.

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