It is a free service that can be used to convert Youtube videos into mp3 format with options to download the converted music to the computer. What I especially like is that the service is easy to handle. You enter the name of a song, musician, album or band in the search form on the Fetch Mp3 site and wait until the search results have been populated.

Search results are divided into tabs. The default results list displays videos hosted on Youtube, with the possibility to switch to Youtube HD, Dailymotion or a mix of all supported video channels.

Each video is displayed with a thumbnail screenshot, name, play time and view count. Controls on the right can be used to preview the video on site in a video overlay or to add it to the conversion queue.

Unregistered users can not use the custom conversion options (from medium quality to ultra quality), only the default option to convert the Youtube video or video from another hosting site to mp3 format.

Videos are added to a queue that is then processed in an iframe. This means that you can switch pages without losing the queue or conversions that are currently underway. Each song that has been converted to mp3 is then offered in that iframe for download. Just click the link and you get the download prompt to download the mp3 version of the Youtube video to your computer. Once you have done that the next video in the queue is processed and converted.

Registering an account is free and gives you access to higher quality conversions. This may be reason enough for some users to do that. Registered users of Fetch Mp3 have other benefits including access to a download history or the conversion of Youtube favorites by entering a username on the site.

One interesting aspect of using Fetch Mp3 to download music from Youtube is the fact that you can use it to download music from videos that are blocked in your country. It is on the other hand not compatible with Vevo videos which cannot be downloaded.

Fetch Mp3 is an easy to use service to download music in mp3 format from Youtube. Yes, there are a few minor points of criticism, like the massive amount of ads, the need to register to download higher quality mp3s or the stop all conversions until you download the current mp3 system.

Now that everything is installed go to Youtube and search for music that you like. Good starting points if you do not know exactly what you are looking for are the top 100 single charts of the United States or the Top 40 singles of the UK. Other options are Amazon or other CD online shops. What I do then is visit Youtube and either enter the artist’s name or song in the search box. This should be enough to find the song that you are looking for, you sometimes have to sort the results by date instead of relevancy to find what you are looking for.

Number one song is Basshunter with NOW YOU’RE GONE in the UK. A search for Basshunter on Youtube revealed the video Basshunter Now You’re Gone.

I save the video with the flv extension. Now I need to use FLV Extract which I have installed earlier. I only check Audio in the interface and drag and drop the saved Youtube video into it. The result is a mp3 audio file. I can already play the audio file and add it to my mp3 player or mobile phone.

Playback starts automatically and I can check that the quality is good enough.

Some mobile phones can already use this mp3 file as a ringtone, some prefer a 30 second version of it. We will now use Audacity to create a 30 second version of the audio file. Load the mp3 into Audacity, you see a graphical representation of it in Audacity shortly thereafter.

Editing a audio file with Audacity is very easy. Check the timeline on top of the audio stream. Left-Click at the 30 seconds position and drag the mouse to the end of the audio file. Now press delete to remove that part which leaves us with a 30 second sample of the song by Basshunter.

You can also cut in the middle or use the end instead if you like to use that part as the ringtone. Not a problem with audacity. Click on File > Export as MP3 and save the file again. Congratulations, you have created a 30 second ringtone.

The interface makes it possible to either play one of the videos that are currently listed on the frontpage, search for a band or song or use the random button to generate a listing of random clips pulled from the database. If you do search for a band or song you should make sure that you use phrases to match the songs. If I wanted to find Fear of the Dark from Iron Maiden I would enter the title and not only fear in the search field.

The interface is loading pretty fast and the songs play perfect, even the ones that I had problems with on Youtube itself. Great site, check it out.