Photo: Yagi Studio (Getty Images)
SoundCloud is one of the most popular websites for uploading music, both by recognized artists and hidden talents. However, when it comes to downloading the music, the site is not that user-friendly. Your first option should always be to try and find a way to buy the song you want officially and, in that way, support your favorite artist. It is also possible that the artist himself will make the song available for download, so look for that first. If that doesn’t work out, we’ll show you how to download songs from SoundCloud using a couple of methods.
With a Browser
The first method you can try is to download the song through your browser. It doesn’t matter which browser you choose as long as it’s not the useless Internet Explorer or outdated Opera. Google Chrome and Firefox are usually your best options for this task, as well as everyday browsing. What you need to do is open the page where your song is located and press F12. This will take you to a developer mode, which lets you take a look at the website’s infrastructure. Open the network tab and reload the page where your song will be playing. As it all opens us you will see a list of things being loaded in the network tab. When you sort out the results by size, the song will most likely be the largest. Right click on it and select the option “Open link in new tab.” Once there, you can simply right click the page and save the song under any name you like.
With Add-ons
If you prefer using Firefox for your daily browsing, it actually has a specific add-on, made with this function in mind. First you need to open up the page with add-ons, by clicking the main menu button and selecting, well, add-ons. You will get a list of everything you’ve installed so far and the option on the left that lets you download new ones. Search for the add-on called DownloadHelper. In order to add it to the browser, you need to click on the install button and wait for the process to end. You may need to restart the browser for the DownloadHelper to start working. After that, simply go to the SoundCloud page and play the song you want to download. The add-on in the top right corner will show you a notification. When you click on it, you will see the song being played right now and a little plus on the right side. If you click it, the song will start to download. All you need to do is make sure you know where it will be placed.
With a Downloading Service
You can also do the same without any add-ons and using the browser you want. All you need to do is use one of the many online downloading services like SCDownloader. It is specifically designed to download songs from the SoundCloud so you know that it will work. What you need to do is go to the SoundCloud page where your song is located and copy the entire page address. After that, go to the service of your choice (say SCDownloader), input the address where it says “Paste a track page link here,” and click download. Right click on the provided link afterwards and press “Save link.” That’s it. Keep in mind that most of these services live off ads and commercials so they might force you to watch a couple of them first or show a number of pop-ups, but it is the price of your free download. It is worth it.
Although we are the ones who showed you how to download songs from SoundCloud, we still urge you to support your artist by buying his or her songs if possible. If not, well, you can enjoy them anyways.
