Before I start I would like to point out that the quality of the mp3 audio files from Soundpedia is not that great. The mp3′s seem the be encoded with 32 Kbit only which is probably not enough for most users. This is therefor just a theoretical approach to downloading music from Soundpedia which can be used on other sites as well.

You do need the software Grab++, Orbit Downloader and a browser.

All you need to do is start Grab++ and let it run in the background. Click on a listen symbol or play icon on the Soundpedia website and wait until the flash player starts and loads the audio file.

Grab++ will display the mp3 with the extension .soulayer1. There will be other files listed but we only need to take care of the soulayer1 files.

Just right-click the soulayer1 file and select download from the menu. Orbit Downloader should show up the file download menu automatically.

I would suggest to rename the soulayer1 extension to mp3 and assign the correct name and artist to the song as well. This way it is much easier to know what you have been downloading.

The site search and browsing the genres is currently the only way to be able to find and listen to all artists that are hosted on Soundpedia. The method to browse the albums and artists reveals that only a few of them are listed currently.

A really nice feature is that you can create your own playlists by searching for songs and adding them to it. You do need to be registered to be able to do that though.

It is also possible to listen to playlists from other users which is a great way to find new songs. Another way would be to click on the newest albums of a genre, related albums when you view a album and related playlists.

This is an excellent way to create playlists from songs that you like even if you do not own the songs. I can’t say that it is really better than Last.fm but it is a great alternative to it.