Download Mixcloud Mixes As MP3 M4A Or AAC

Learn how to download or rip any mix or podcast hosted on Mixloud.com as MP3, M4A or AAC audio file.

This post is updated regularly with the latest information and method on how to download from Mixcloud. Bookmark this post and check back here if you are having trouble downloading from Mixcloud. Thanks to avid participation in the comments section there is always a quick solution if Mixcloud changes its site code or the way mixes are being streamed. Thanks goes out to all commenters below!

As a reference I keep the older and non-working methods archived as PDF files.
August 09 2011 Reference Version 01.pdf

Both JDownloader and Offliberty.com work again and will download the MP3 from Mixcloud.com directly. Well done!

One other helpful tool is Andrew's MixCloud to RSS converter. Check it out!

Find Mixcloud Direct Download Links
This time round you will need Chrome, Google's web browser. If you do not like to install it to your hard disk you can also use the very neat portable version. This is very convenient and I highly recommend it as it installs to a folder on your system without touching your operating system or registry files. Another huge advantage is that if you install it to a USB stick you can take it with you to any other computer running the same operating system type (it won't matter if it is XP, Vista or Windows 7 for example) and have your bookmarks, history and preferences in place already. Get the latest portable version of Google Chrome from here: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/google_chrome_portable

Once you got Chrome up and running go to any mix page on Mixcloud.com. In this first example I am going to use Fort Knox Five presents "Funk The World 01".

Right-click on a empty spot on the page and select "Inspect Element" from the menu that pops up.

Now the Google Chrome's Web Inspector will come up from the bottom of the screen. Select the tab Network from the menu bar.

Now click the green play button and watch the Web Inspector do the work for you. You will see a lot of elements loading and Web Inspector automatically scrolling to the bottom of them all. Once the mix has started playing a little bit the scrolling will stop and you will see two important things. On the right hand side you can see the Timeline and grey bar becoming longer continuously. On the left hand side of the same row you can see the URL for the mix. This is shown in the Name Path column. Also in the Type column you can see that this is a video/mp4 file. Actually it is not but Web Inspector categorizes it as such.

Now right-click on the URL in the Name Path column and open the link in a new tab. Make sure to select the one in the row with the loading grey bar in the Timeline and not the cancelled request. The cancelled request will show up in red text font colour anyways. Easy!

Once the new tab has opened it will show as loading until you have stopped playing the mix in the previous tab.

Go back to the previous tab with the mix playing and click on the back button. Do not pause the mix. This will not work properly. You need to stop the mix by hitting the back button of the browser instead of pausing it.

This will stop the connection to the Mixcloud server and only then will the previously selected URL load in the new tab automatically.

Now you will see the mix being played in Google Chrome automatically. This is the mix in the M4A audio file format. If you like to download it in this lossy format simply right-click on an empty spot into the page and select Save as.

Download Mixcloud Mixes As MP3
To get the mix in the original MP3 audio file format you have to change the URL of the mix a little bit just like Kirill pointed out here. The M4A URL in this example is:

http://stream8.mxcdn.com/cloudcasts/m4a/64/9/6/a/e/93a8-2d77-4573-85c5-68bfb679d9bc.m4a

Exchange the m4a/64 with originals in the middle of the URL and swap m4a for mp3 at the end of the URL. The new URL should look like this:

http://stream8.mxcdn.com/cloudcasts/originals/9/6/a/e/93a8-2d77-4573-85c5-68bfb679d9bc.mp3

If you are lucky this is your MP3 Mixcloud direct download link. In this case unfortunately it does not work and so you have to try exchanging the numbers from 1 to 10 right after stream. If the MP3 is not hosted on stream8 like in this case it could be hosted on stream1, stream2, stream3, stream4, stream5, stream6, stream7, stream8, stream9 or stream10. There is no other way of doing this at the moment unfortunately.

After cycling through the 9 other possibilities you will see that the MP3 file for this mix is hosted on

http://stream1.mxcdn.com/cloudcasts/originals/9/6/a/e/93a8-2d77-4573-85c5-68bfb679d9bc.mp3

as well as on

http://stream2.mxcdn.com/cloudcasts/originals/9/6/a/e/93a8-2d77-4573-85c5-68bfb679d9bc.mp3

To download this mix as a  MP3 audio file simply right-click on an empty spot into the page and select Save as.

A few tests have shown that when downloading through Chrome initially I got a quite high download speed that quickly dropped to about 50 kB/s (kilobyte/second) per mix. When using DownThemAll! Manager instead my tests have shown that generally the download speed is about 150 to 200 kB/s. Attention if you tweak DownThemAll! too much you might get Timeout errors from Mixcloud. Using JDownloader for this task did not increase the download speed at all, again it was initally high and then dropped to about 50 kB/s, so if you can't wait to have that MP3 use DownThemAll! Manager.

Apart from that I am thinking of a little Mixcloud download-helper script that can take the found M4A link, transform it into a MP3 link and then simply cycle through the 10 different streams till hitting the live one and download it. Should not be too hard to accomplish. Let's see..

Mixes Not Hosted On Mixcloud
Some artists on Mixcloud choose to have their own hosting in place instead of using Mixcloud. This is the case for Adam Beyer for example.

If you load any of his mixes on Mixcloud and have a look at the Web Inspector Network tab you will find that all his mixes are hosted on Libsyn.com while being played through Mixcloud. This is possibly done to be able to have the mixes play on various other sites while avoiding being limited to Mixcloud.

Here Web Inspector will also automatically scroll to the bottom while the URL that interests is a a little bit further up. This however is not a problem. Keep an eye on the Timeline. Scroll up a little bit and in the row where the grey bar starts becoming longer you will find the direct download link for the mix in the Name Path column very easily.

Opening the link for the mix will lead directly to the MP3 audio file. Again you will have to stop the mix playing in the Mixcloud tab by clicking the back button of the browser. Otherwise the URL will not load in the new tab. This is because the URL for the mix cannot be loaded twice from the same IP address. Once you have stopped the mix in the Mixcloud tab you can very conveniently download it from the newly opened tab.

To download this MP3 simply with a right-click on an empty spot into the page and select Save as.

All Mixcloud Downloaders Fail
I have checked and come to the conclusion that currently all "Mixcloud Downloaders" fail full stop.

Clouddownload is not working.

The Google Chrome extension MixCloud Downloader is not working.

The Greasemonkey Userscript Mixcloud Download is not working.

It seems Mixcloud have done a better job this time round. On the other hand some people have gotten in touch already in private possibly being able to decode the binary responsible for returning the correct M4A audio file URL. In that case getting the MP3 automatically is simply a matter of an esay regular expression. We will see... Fingers crossed everyone!

chrome://net-internals Method Not Recommended
Other sites have been quick to take up the method proposed by sam lowry in the comments section below. However I believe this way of going about it has several disadvantages.

1. chrome://net-internals does not automatically show you which one of the M4A or MP3 audio file URLs coming up is actually being played and the correct one. Remember we have got stream1-8 to cycle through and with net-internals showing more than one M4A URL for the mix this already means one more source for an error and hence more work getting to the direct download link.


2. chrome://net-internals does not let you automatically open the correct M4A audio file URL in a new tab, instead you have to copy and paste the results one by one to a new tab before even being sure which one is the correct one.


3. chrome://net-internals will not show you the link to an MP3 audio file while you have got M4A as a filter in place. If an artist chooses to host their mixes with another host like this is the case with Adam Beyer you will have to change the filter after finding out that there are no M4A links in place.

Sam Lowry please do not take these disadvantages with your proposed method personally or negative. As you wrote in the comment you have been completely new to network sniffing and regard yourself as a newbie on the topic. Even more so I want to thank you for trying and getting your head round it and simply experimenting with what Google Chrome has up its sleeve! Thank you for that and keep up this spirit. It is how we all started out in most of the cases. I am sure next time your most valuable input here will not have any disadvantages. So what I am trying to say is that this should not discourage you and others that might consider themselves as newbies from trying things out in the future. Remember: "It's More Fun to Compute." All comments that help the community downloading from Mixcloud are most welcome!

I hope you have enjoyed this post. If you have any questions or remarks please do feel free to leave a comment.