Help: Saving the Actual File

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So I'm on the internet, as I so usually am, and I try to save a few music files to my hard drive. Unfortunately, I discover that these files have not actually been saved. Instead a file linking to the song on the internet was created in *.cgi.

I need the actual files to work with, and this link stuff won't work. Any help?

Have you tried going to the .cgi file and right clicking on the link to the mp3 and using "Save link as..."?

If this does not help, could you perhaps post a link to the website where you are getting this problem, if possible?

Somewhere in with your operating system files there will be a folder where your browser puts everything that you look at on the net.

For my O/S and the IE browser it is in the windows folder in another folder called "temporary internet files" - this may have sub folders. If you search this folder for *.mp3 after you have actually listened to the music, it will be there somewhere. Then you can copy it to somewhere else more useful.

The files will stay there depending on how much space you let your browser use for for internet files and how much browsing you do. If you allow a small amount of space and browse a lot the files will disappear quite quickly, so best to check after each song you hear. This works quite well on streaming video or music when the web page won't let you right click and save the file.

As X writes, if you are getting a cgi file - it may be that you are not where the mp3 file is. ie you need to click on the link that shows as cgi when you do right click to get to the link for the mp3 file. Sometimes the cgi file is used to retrieve and play the mp3 so you can't save it by right clicking - thats when you have to go trawling through your temporary internet files to find it.

Here's what I believe is happening: you are right clicking the links and going to Save Target As then saving that to your hard drive. However these links actually point to CGI pages which were meant to mask the address of the file to stop other sites from leeching bandwidth. It is a common practice. The way to get around it is to just left click the link, let it take you where you want to go, then save the file from there.

This is the site: http://www.russia-in-us.com/Music/Artists/Visotsky/

The thing is I'm not right-clicking. I'm clicking the link, and I get the option of either opening the file or saving it. I save it but it's still just a link...

The files in my cache are just the link too.

I thought I had figured out the answer when I opened the cgi file for "About Cook" in Notepad, but the address I found inside to the mp3 file doesn't seem to work even if you change the protocol. I guess the song is just supposed to play in RealPlayer or something and I'm not sure how to save it from there.

The first few I clicked on are in .ra (realaudio) format for RealPlayer...what you're saving is not really a file, but a link that tells RealPlayer where to find the file.

RealPlayer "should" recognize them if you have it installed...although I've heard of some problems with ver. 10 not being able to recognize the .ra files...missing codec needing installed or something...

There are other players that will also recognize the .ra format too if you don't have RealPlayer installed and aren't too crazy about it (I'm not )...Real Alternative is one...I think there are more.