A Conflagration of Randomness

Note for people wanting to convert TubeRadio to mp3: Since I have observed in my logs that several people have wanted to convert tuberadio music into mp3s you can, but you will need to go to the video in the corner, put the mouse near the top of the video and click on the link that appears.  This will take you to the main youtube video and then you can use a program such as Dirpy to convert this video into an mp3.  More information can be found here.

A few weeks ago a new application was featured on Lifehacker.com.  As usual I checked the website and wound up on a very useful program called TubeRadio.  Owned by Last.fm, the music website, TubeRadio allows you search for videos/songs on Youtube and play them right there in the browser.  It allows you to search for name of video, but even cooler is its ability to search for and fill a playlist with the whole discography of an artist.

The interface looks similar to iTunes, but unlike iTunes, it plays only youtube videos, but plays them just as a normal desktop mp3 player.    It evens allows you to share playlists like in iTunes.  TubeRadio allows you to repeat tracks, shuffle tracks of a playlist, pause, start, and skip tracks in a playlist.

At the bottom you can view lyrics, bios, and information about the band.  The best part is its free!  Just like with Pandora you can create an account that will save your playlists and preferences.  The only regret I have about TubeRadio is that I can’t figure out how to not display the video at the bottom since that would save my cpu since the flash player eats it up.  Maybe they have a feature to just play the music and not the video, but I don’t know it.

Also, Happy 2 Month Anniversary TubeRadio!  It turned 2 months on November 29, 2009.

[Update] After posting this I received an email from the owners of TubeRadio via Twitter.  Here are some points they gave me:

• “We use the last.fm databse of artists so their terms are that we have to put “powered by last.fm” on the site. Other than that, we have no affiliation with them.”
• “As much as we’d love to be able to offer an audio only stream, it’s against YouTube terms and conditions to do that, so the video _has_ to be there (it even has to be a certain minimum size!)”

TubeRadio is particiating in the competition for “Best New Startup of 2009.”  They would like you to vote for them at http://bit.ly/3H6XkV
Links:

Tuberadio.fm

Press Release Annoucing TubeRadio

TubeRadio on Facebook

TubeRadio on Twitter

The winner is: Dirpy - “Dirpy Studio transcodes high quality YouTube videos to mp3s in real time for download”

Today I will tell you how to make youtube videos into mp3s. I have been asked before how to do it and have done it on several occasions if a video on youtube has video unobtainable by other means. Usually this should be a last resort as the quality of youtube video audio is poor. When I say poor I mean it. Typical iTunes downloads range from 128 kilo-bits per second (kbps) – 192 kbps. Very good quality is at the upper bound of mp3s which is 320 kbps. Youtube videos are down to about 64 kbps…not very good, about the quality of an audiobook. Of course the more kbps a mp3 has the more range of sounds it can produce and thus have much higher quality. MP3s already cut the quality of CDs by taking out the higher and lower frequencies, which usually are not able to be heard by most people. Certain audio file formats such as FLAC are called lossless because they allow the audio to be played back on the computer with the same quality as on a CD. However, MP3 is not a lossless format because it compresses the audio to make a much more manageable file size, usually 2-20 mb compared to about 30-100 mb for a FLAC. Anyway, enough about file formats. If you still want to download that rare song from Youtube here’s how:

Method 1:  Let a Site Convert for You

This is a very easy step.  Simply go to the video page on youtube.  Then copy the url of that page from the address bar.  Go to Google.com and enter the search query: convert youtube to mp3.  Usually the top few sites work well.  They will have a form to enter the url of video and then all you have to do is press “convert” and voila, in a moment you have a link to download the mp3 of the video.  A very short and simple method to get the mp3 for your favorite song. 

Recommended sites:

http://www.youtubetomp3.net

http://www.listentoyoutube.com

http://www.video2mp3.net

http://www.vidtomp3.com

http://www.dirpy.com/

[UPDATE]: In the last few months, a new website called Dirpy emerged, and this is the program I highly recommend.  It allows you to edit the metadata tags describing a song, such as Artist, Album, Year, etc.