Rip me

Obviously, there was a price to pay for such insolence. After all, you can’t go about whacking hornets’ nests and not expect to get stung, right? The thing is that with Mp3s, the technology is so blindingly simple, it’s a wonder record companies haven’t been made obsolete already.

All you need to make an Mp3 out of a taped song is a walkman, a length of shielded stereo cable, a computer with a sound card and some software, which is available for download, free of cost.

What you do is plug the walkman into your sound card’s Line In’ slot, using the shielded stereo cable. (You can use an unshielded cable, but the quality of the sound will be compromised). The best bit of software available for Mp3 coding is called Audiograbber, which can be downloaded from audiograbber.com. The program will transfer the music first into .wav format, and then from .wav, into .mp3 format.

There are a few considerations though – make sure you’ve got enough space on your hard drive first – a four minute song in .wav format could take up anywhere between 50-60 Mb. And also, after converting it into Mp3 format, make sure you delete the .wav file, to save space.

The coding procedure is automatic and not many things can go wrong, unless there’s a power failure or blue-green aliens from Vontravoogel V attack the Earth just as you’re finishing up with Come As you Are by Nirvana.

Another thing you have to take into consideration is the fact that despite everything, Mp3s ARE illegal, and you MUST think twice before trying to make Mp3s or distributing them… and that’s a decision no-one can help you with.