Rip and download DRM free music from Spotify

This guide shows how to rip and download DRM-free music from Spotify.   The music we’ll download from Spotify is DRM free so you can play the tracks on your favoured MP3 players. In order to rip from Spotify you’ll need a piece of $20 software,  plus an Open (free) account with Spotify.  There is some reported success by decoding the Spotify locally cached files but the method we’ll use is to simply capture the music stream from Spotify.

Ripping from Spotify is still an area of legal contention,  but unlike downloading using PTP file sharing, ripping from Spotify can’t be detected.

The Spotify Open account provides 20 hours of free music per month enabling you to download 20 albums a month from Spotify.   With the Spotify Open account some of the latest albums are initially blocked so try checking back in a couple of weeks.  In addition,  you can sign-up for different Spotify accounts and enjoy an unlimited number of 20 hour streams. Sign up for an Open Spotify account here.

I recommend Total Recorder or Replay Music for capturing the Spotify stream.  Replay Music has the advantage of automatically detecting gaps to split the Spotify stream into different tracks. You can get Replay Music for $21,  and Total Recorder for  $18.

In addition, I recommended disabling the Windows sounds to stop these appearing on the Spotify recorded audio stream.  Do this in Windows 7 by right clicking on the desktop > Personalize > Sounds.  Under sound scheme select “No sounds“. Under Windows XP, follow this simple guide.

I’ll use Replay Music to capture the Spotify stream,  so you need to download and install a copy.  You must open the Replay program before opening Spotify and make sure Spotify is not running in the system tray. 

Open Replay Music and first check some settings by selecting Settings.

Under the Input settings, ensure Input Source is set to Audio Driver, and under Splitting check Automatically Split Tracks is selected.  Finally,  under Output, select a decent output format – MP3,  256Kbps.   Select OK.

Next, cue up the music you want to rip from Spotify, so open up Spotify and search for the album you want.  Now, go back to Replay Music, and select Start Recording, and another dialog box will appear. Enter the name of the Artist, Album, Genre, and also choose to add the tracks to iTunes or Windows Media Player.  Click OK to start the recording.

Flip back to Spotify, and ensure that the Volume level is at max.  Right click on the Album and click Play to start the Spotify stream.  By starting to play the album in this way, it ensures all the tracks are cued up in the correct order.

Sit back and listen to the Spotify stream – we’ll remove the adverts shortly.

Because this is recording from your internal sound card,  you can change the volume on your speakers without affecting the recording.  

Replay Music will try to automatically tag the downloads from Spotify.  Sometimes this works, other times it doesn’t and it depends on which album you download from Spotify.  Replay Music will also automatically split the Spotify stream when it detects a silent part.  In addition, you’ll probably see some tracks as “Not recognized”, which are the adverts played in the Spotify stream.

The folder where the Spotify files are saved is displayed in the green box at the top of Replay Music. 

How to remove the ads from the end/beginning of the track

There are certain occasions where Replay Music fails to split the advert from the Spotify stream.  If this happens, I recommend a free utility called MP3splt.  Listen to the MP3 in your favourite player and note down the time that the track should have been split.  Assuming you’ve installed MP3splt into “C:\Program Files\mp3splt”, copy the offending MP3 file to this folder.  Use the following command to split the file at the right time.

mp3splt trackwithads.mp3 0.00 MM.SS EOF

This command tells mp3splt to split the file called trackwithads.mp3 into two parts at the time MM.SS – minutes and seconds. The 0.00  denotes the beginning, and EOF the end.