Music Downloads

July 10, 2007 11:22 AM

I've been attempting (unsuccessfully) to download out of print albums from music blogs. One of two problems typically occurs. Once the download is complete I can't locate the file anywhere, or, if the file appears I'm unable to open it. Any suggestions?
posted by Zebtron to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

To make life easy, save files to your desktop. You'll know where they are, and you can move them when you want to. Don't you have a search feature whereby you can type in the file name (bandname_albumname, for example) to find out where the missing files downloaded to? Are you sure the download is complete and not just crapping out on you?

The files you can't open are probably compressed (zipped) and you need something like winzip or stuffit to decompress them. What kind of message do you get when you try to open them? What's the extension on the file - zip? tar? rar? gz? sit? sitx? Something else?
posted by iconomy at 11:33 AM on July 10, 2007

What operating system and browser are you using?

If you're in Firefox, you can press CTRL+J, which'll open up your recent downloads. There, right-click on one of the files, and select "Open Containing Folder." If you're on IE, sorry.
posted by hobbes at 2:19 PM on July 10, 2007

if you're on os x or other system with a decent command line, try just using wget. Sometimes my browser gives me issues, and going through other routes gets around that.
posted by Arturus at 6:06 PM on July 10, 2007

Zebtron
I have been downloading gigs of OOP albums in the past week. I downloaded Flash Got and Flash Get as Firefox extension. Also downloaded 7-zip for the .rar files. 7-zip has "test archive" feature. If the archive is iincomplete I can immediately download again.

Firefox has a default destination for downloads, select a folder in Preferences. Flash Get also has default destination which you can modify in the dialog box.

I have noticed that some files I download are the link to the file, not the album itself. They show up as 5.58 mb HTML files when the album would be 60-90 mb, either zip or rar format. Click all the way thru to the actual download site, don't download from the blog site.

Are you working in PC or Mac?
posted by ohshenandoah at 8:24 AM on July 11, 2007