I was talking to a fellow surfer at work the other day. He was remarking about the way that some people download songs from the Internet using P2P software.

“Of course, I would never bother to download an individual album track” was one of his comments. I was intrigued………

He explained that he usually downloaded the full album. I had seen whole albums in a single file, but had never bothered to try this way of getting songs.

“You should check out “Albumwrap”, he said……………..so I did!

Albumwrap turns out to be two separate pieces of software.

It comes with the decoder part, which is freeware, and the encoder, which isn’t, as I shall show you.

Albumwrap can be found at http://infamus.com/albumwrap/

As I said previously, the decoder part known as Albumwrap extractor is free.

The software is available in both Mac (classic and Osx) version and Windows. It says that the software is for Windows 95/8, but I haven’t had any problems using it under M.E., so I also expect it to work under XP.

The software comes, as a 368k zip file for the windows version, so shouldn’t take long to download even if you are still stuck on modem as I am.

Simply extract the zip anywhere you wish to run the software.

Ok, so now what?

Well, Albumwrap files are usually found on P2P systems and the album title is usually appended with ALBW.

A typical example would be  “Evanescence - Entire Album CD - Fallen_ALBW.mp3”

I actually downloaded this file, just to try the software…………..I already have bought this CD.

Now to show what this does. The file in question was  64.5 MB, just in case people are wondering…………

Start the decoder…………click the extract album button…………….

We now have a requestor asking for a file to be loaded……………

Select the file and ……….. Bingo!

You can now click Select all……..or tick the checkboxes for whatever tracks you wish…………

Select  where you want the files saved and that’s it!

You now have individual mp3 files of all the tracks.

It even saves the information about each track………

There, easy peasy!

This means that you can save an awful lot of time searching for a particular album, just download the file and you have it.

The files play ok after they have been decoded, they even play ok before they have been decoded. Well, it does in WinAmp.

Since its freeware and small, it won’t really matter too much if you decide to keep a copy on your drive, and never use it.

Well worth a try.

The encoder part called simply Albumwrap is shareware. The fee according to the website is $15, so wouldn’t break the Bank either.

You can download a time limited demo of it from the same website. I did download and try, but wiped it after the time ran out, as I didn’t have any need for it.

Same simple interface…………….

Simply add mp3 files, no, it doesn’t encode straight from CD!

Once you’ve added all the files you wish, click the make album button.

Fill in the details and click the wrap album button.

It really can’t get any easier than this, surely………..

Final message, surprisingly………

As I say, a very simple little utility, and may come in handy one day.

Go forth and download it!

By Ian Urie