1-Click MP3 Downloader

According to U4Soft, their 1-Click MP3 Downloader finds free and legal MP3s that you can listen to or download. It's not P2P software, so you're not required to share or host any files. Sounds like a great idea since there's lots of free music online, including free MP3s. Unfortunately, all 1-Click MP3 Downloader delivered was one of the most annoying nags we've ever been subjected to by so-called freeware and a lot of offers to download a program that converts YouTube videos into MP3s. We've downloaded tunes from YouTube, but it's hardly an alternative to Spotify, Pandora, and similar sites. We ran 1-Click MP3 Downloader in Windows 7, though it's compatible with Windows NT/98 to 8.

Strike one came early with 1-Click MP3 Downloader in the form of a nag box permanently affixed to the lower-right corner of our desktop stating, "This program is FREE for personal use." But to remove the nag we'd have to make a donation: "Thank you for your support!" Beg your pardon? Strike two came when we typed in an artist in 1-Click MP3 Downloader's search field. A pop-up informed us that "Sometimes there are not too many MP3 files on the Internet" (really?) and would I like to try an easier search or maybe download 1-Click YouTube Downloader? Well, we opted for an easier search, but again that darned Internet let us down! We tried well-known and obscure songs, famous and unknown artists, copyrighted and public domain, and even tunes we knew were freely available as MP3s because we'd downloaded them before -- with zero results. Strike three probably came when 1-Click MP3 Downloader failed to return a single hit for "Happy Birthday to You," which by some accounts is the most famous song in the world. Three strikes and 1-Click MP3 Downloader was out of our system.

Want free tunes? A little bit of searching will turn up plenty, and there's no shortage of legit tools to download, convert, and play them. But 1-Click MP3 Downloader isn't one of them.