We all look for music (and other stuff) online, but it often happens that what you are looking for isn’t available there. Some of the places where you are most likely to find what you are looking for (beyond the P2P networks) are CoolToad and eSnips. CoolToad (when I last checked) allows registered users to download the stuff, but eSnips has of late kept on changing their code (and the players), making it difficult for users to download from there.
Even my trusted software Orbit didn’t work here (it has a nice Grab++ utility), nor did other download managers. The guys at eSnips have seem to have nullified the tricks that I found via a quick Google search. Therefore I resorted to the tried and tested cache trick (as the initiated would already know – this works in many other cases too).
This works since eSnips doesn’t do Real Time Streaming (else we would have to use other tricks).
[Update: There’s an even easier alternate way to do it. Go to the bottom of this post for details]
Since I recommend and use Firefox, the following instructions are Firefox specific (on Windows XP).
1. Search for the file you want to download on eSnips
2. Delete your browser’s cache (press Ctrl+Shft+Del or go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > And click on the Clear Now button under the Cache section) – I’ll explain the need later
3. Let the file play/load in totality (this involves a bit of waiting)
4. On the browser’s address bar type about:cache
5. Under the Disk cache device copy the path of the Cache directory.
It would be something like this: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\6q1bkcu8.default\Cache
6. Paste the copied path on Firefox’s address bar
7. Look for the file with the heaviest size (this is the one in most cases and it is why I asked to delete the cache in the first place, to avoid any confusion with a large number of files)
8. Right click on the link corresponding on the file and select Save Link As from the right click contextual menu and save it where you want to.
9. While saving give the file an .mp3 (or whatever is relevant) extension, you can also rename the file and you are done.
I suggest this trick since nothing else seemed to download files from eSnips for me. If you know of easier better tricks please share them in the comments.
Update: I later realised that the Firefox addon DownloadHelper performs the task with lesser sweat.
This post just might be redundant for registered eSnips users. eSnips seems to have added a direct download link to the media files to save users all the effort. A welcome initiative indeed. Time for YouTube to also implement this. But you need to be registered to benefit from that, in case you don’t want an eSnips account, this post will still be of some help.
