Alright alright alright alright alright, listen to me for a second. Listen! I figured out a trick! You’re going to love this! Alright, so. You know YouTube, right? You’ve heard of YouTube? Okay, you know how they have a lot of videos on there? I mean, duh, of course they do, but I’m talking about music videos. You know, artists put music videos on there, or record labels, or maybe fans upload videos that contain pieces of music, all that stuff. And, well, okay, you’re not allowed to put other people’s music on there. I think. Pretty sure. But look around you: it’s all over the place. I DJ, and whenever I get a request for something I don’t have I just fire up the ol’ YouTube and I guarantee you I can find it instantly. Whatever it is. It’s on there.
Okay, and you know how you can download those videos and convert them into mp3s, right? THAT’S RIGHT, SUCKERS. Here’s what you do.* Download ffmpegX; it’s this all-purpose file format converter, drag-and-drop, piece of cake. Now. Go to the YouTube video you want. See that URL bar at the top of your browser? Simply type in ‘pwn’ before the word ‘youtube’ and download away. It’s literally that easy. Then pop it in ffmpegX, tell it to convert that sombitch into an mp3, and there you are. Bob’s your uncle. It’s that easy.
Here’s why I’m telling you this. There’s so much wonderful stuff on YouTube that’s pretty much YouTube exclusive. Adorable indie-pop Beyonce covers, disturbing chopped-and-screwed remixes,** divinely-inspired mashups, it’s all there. Anything you want. And I know you’re like me: when you hear something you like, you want to hear it over and over again. It’s frustrating when YouTube is the only medium I have to hear something I like. If I use my trick, I can put it on my iPod or play it through my car stereo. I love that.
Just do us all a kindness, will you? Don’t abuse this godsend. This shit is probably illegal. Like, fourteen kinds of illegal. If it isn’t, it should be. Don’t go downloading whole albums by major artists with big legal budgets. Because, you realize, you totally could. And then the RIAA would torpedo deturl.com and we couldn’t do this anymore. At all. PwnYouTube is this massively ballsy dare; they’re daring the powers that be to shut them down. Don’t make it easy for them.
The way I see it is that we can do this responsibly with independent artists, people just doing it for fun and putting it on YouTube. All the songs I’m posting today I processed in this way, and you’ll notice they’re covers or remixes. The people who put them on YouTube aren’t making money from it. They’re not in it for that. They’re doing it because they love to do it. And I love what they do, so much that I want to bathe my ears in it at all times.
Alright, go nuts. Within reason.
Pomplamoose – “Single Ladies” (Beyonce cover)
Flosstradamus – “Overnight Star” (Sigur Ros v. Twista)
T.I. – “What You Know” (chopped and screwed)
* I’m sure there’s an easier way to do all this. I’m a mac user. When I have a problem I google it and the first solution that comes up is the one I go with. If you know an easier way, go with it.
** I love chopped-and-screwed. It sounds like the devil and he’s drunk.
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Comments ( 2 )
Mike "Shmoo" Steely of Electric Gypsy added these pithy words on Dec 02 09 at 8:17 pmThis sorta thing is useful for quickly finding songs your band will be doing a cover of when you haven’t got the cd and need to hear the song for reference, but using it simply to fill your iPod is not the best option IMHO.
Dan added these pithy words on Jan 03 10 at 11:48 pmIf you don’t want to mess with ffmpeg, you can use one of the web sites that will do the conversion for you. http://www.video2mp3.net/ seems to work pretty well.
