Have you ever needed to find a song online, but all of your usual search engine results are coming up empty? Don’t give up hope. There is more than one way to find any song online!
Finding the song title first can obviously be helpful if you already know that information. You can use Google or Bing (or whichever search engine you prefer) by typing in the name of the artist/song/video; these can be found by looking on CD jackets, on iTunes, on YouTube videos, etc.
YouTube is great for finding popular music since users upload thousands of songs every day. If it is not available through “official” channels like iTunes or Spotify, it will likely be available through some obscure corner of YouTube. Search for the artist/song, and there is a good chance that something will pop up.
Once you have the song name, use Google to search for lyrics or even just “lyrics to _____ by ______.” If you are lucky, this may not only give you the song’s lyrics but also the artist’s name! This works great if you know one line of a song but can’t remember who sings it.
Popular music videos are usually on YouTube, so search for them there. The same goes for popular songs; chances are they’re on some video streaming website like Vimeo or DailyMotion. Sometimes these online videos won’t allow embedding into blogs or other websites (especially while using Google). You can use an outside source like TubeNinja or MP3juice (https://atozmp3.io/download-free-mp3/) to download videos from these websites if they are necessary for your research.
If you still can’t find the song or want more than just its lyrics, there is one last option. Most songs also have their own website that will host the song’s entire album on their site. For example, here is a search for Imagine Dragons ‘ latest release ongoing, Night Visions.
How to download music from torrent sites
When you download music from torrent sites, you are actually getting a “torrent file.” This is just a small text file that contains the link(s) to the location of the song. To open this file, all you need is any kind of Torrent client software on Windows or Mac with a VPN (https://vpntesting.com/best-vpn/mac) (available for free online). Once you have downloaded and opened the torrent file, simply click on it in order to begin downloading! Or you can check this website for more options
Best of luck finding that song! If these were unsuccessful, there are also tools like Shazam, which can identify songs by their sound. You can even set up Google Alerts with specific keywords related to your searches so that if anything related ever pops up again in the future, will send you an email notification.
Torrenting is illegal and may be against your university’s policies. Please know the risks before using these methods to download music, and do not blame ProfHacker if you get caught!
