When you only want the one song
Sometimes you do not need a whole playlist or a full album. You heard one track, you want it on a USB stick for the car or loaded onto an old MP3 player, and that is the entire job. Spotify makes that oddly hard on its own, and most "downloader" pages push you toward bulk tools that are overkill for a single song.
This page is for the single-track case. Paste one Spotify song link, pick a format and bitrate, download one file. If you later want everything from a record or a big list, the album downloader and playlist downloader handle those in batches. For one song, stay here.
Worth saying up front so there are no surprises later: the file you get is a normal audio file, not Spotify's own audio. Spotify's stream is DRM-protected and no website decrypts it. Tools like ours read the track details off your link, find a matching copy of that recording, and transcode it to the format you asked for. That has consequences for quality, which we get to below, and it is the honest version of how every paste-a-link downloader works.
Spotify has no real "download this song" button
Here is the thing that sends most people looking for a downloader in the first place. Spotify does not let you download a single song by itself. There is no per-track save-to-file option anywhere in the app.
Even inside Premium, the workaround NoteBurner and others describe is clumsy: you create a playlist, add just that one song to it, then hit download on the playlist. And what you get is not a file. It is an encrypted offline copy that only plays inside the Spotify app, on that device, while your subscription is active. Spotify's support docs are clear that offline downloads are capped, tied to the app, expire if you do not go online at least once every 30 days, and disappear entirely if you cancel. Free users do not get the music download button at all.
So the built-in route gives you a playlist you did not want, holding a locked copy you cannot move. That is not "downloading a song" in any way that is useful outside Spotify. A real song file is what this tool produces instead.
The paste-a-track-link flow
Grabbing one song takes about ten seconds once you have the link. Here is the whole thing:
- In Spotify, find the song. On desktop, right-click the track title and choose Share, then Copy Song Link. On mobile, tap the three dots next to the song, tap Share, then Copy link. The link looks like
https://open.spotify.com/track/…and the/track/part is how you know you grabbed the song and not the album or playlist. - Paste it into the box on our converter.
- Pick your format (MP3 for anything, AAC for Apple devices, WAV or FLAC if you have a specific reason) and, for the lossy formats, a bitrate up to 320 kbps.
- Start the conversion and download the file. Nothing installs, and we never ask for your Spotify login.
One detail that trips people up: make sure you copied the song link, not the album or artist link. If you right-click too high in the list you can end up with the album URL, which contains /album/ and pulls every track. If you only want the one song, the URL should say /track/.
Picking a format and bitrate for a single track
For one song the file is small enough that the "save space" argument barely matters, so pick for playback, not size. A four-minute track at 320 kbps MP3 lands around 9 to 10 MB. The same song as WAV is roughly ten times that and sounds no better from a streaming source. Here is the short version:
| Format | Best for a single song | Rough size (4 min track) |
|---|---|---|
| MP3 320 kbps | The safe default. Plays on every phone, car stereo, and old MP3 player ever made. | ~9 MB |
| AAC | iPhone, iPad, and Apple ecosystem. Slightly more efficient than MP3 at the same bitrate. | ~7 to 9 MB |
| WAV | Dropping the track into an editor, making a ringtone, or chopping a sample. | ~40 MB |
| FLAC | You want a lossless container to file it alongside a lossless library. | ~25 to 30 MB |
If you are not sure, choose MP3 at 320 kbps and move on. There is a full walkthrough of that setting in our guide on Spotify to MP3 at 320 kbps, and a broader step-by-step in how to convert Spotify to MP3.
The quality ceiling, told straight
You cannot pull more quality out of a file than was in it to begin with. A converter can hold quality steady or lower it. It cannot add detail. Spotify streams top out around 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis on the highest quality setting, and that is already lossy audio. So the best case for any song pulled through a link tool is a 320 kbps lossy file that came from another lossy source.
That is genuinely fine for the use most people have: earbuds, a car, a phone, a portable player. It is not lossless, no matter what a download button claims, and choosing FLAC or WAV does not change that. A "FLAC from Spotify" is a lossless wrapper around lossy audio. You get a bigger file, not a better-sounding one. SoundGuys makes the same point about capture-based methods: the recording is only ever as good as the track being played, and picking a fancy format does not change how it sounds.
This is the single most useful thing to understand before you download anything. If someone promises "lossless single tracks from Spotify," they are describing the container, not the audio inside it.
Getting clean tags and a sensible filename
The reason to use a proper song downloader instead of screen-recording the audio is metadata. A good tool writes the title, artist, album, and cover art into the file so it shows up correctly in your music player instead of landing as "Track 01" with a blank artist field.
Our converter carries the tags it can read from the track link into the output file, so an MP3 or FLAC arrives named after the song with the artist and album filled in. If you plan to load the file onto a phone, a car USB stick, or an old iPod, that tagging is what makes the song appear under the right artist instead of in an "Unknown" pile. If a tag comes through wrong, any free tagger (Mp3tag on Windows, the Get Info panel in the Music app on Mac) fixes it in a few seconds.
This is also where the free command-line tool spotDL falls down for single tracks. spotDL reads the Spotify track list and then finds a match on YouTube to download, so for one song it sometimes grabs a live version, a sped-up edit, or a remaster instead of the studio recording you wanted, and the tag can inherit the wrong YouTube title. For a whole library that is a fair trade. For the one specific song you care about, matching errors are more annoying, which is another reason the paste-one-link flow suits single tracks.
One track vs. album vs. playlist
They sound like the same tool, but the link you paste decides which job you are doing:
- One song: the link has
/track/in it. That is this page. You get a single file. - A full record: the link has
/album/in it. Use the Spotify album downloader, which pulls every track in order and can zip them together with the album art. - A whole list: the link has
/playlist/in it. Use the Spotify playlist downloader for batch jobs and a single zip.
If you want the general-purpose tool that handles any of the three, the Spotify downloader page covers all link types and compares online tools, desktop apps, and spotDL side by side.
Is downloading a single song allowed?
Two separate questions hide inside "is this okay." One is your device. A browser-based tool does not install an executable, so there is nothing to carry malware, but you should still avoid any site that pushes fake download buttons or asks for your Spotify password. Ours does neither.
The other question is legality, and it deserves a straight answer. Spotify's audio is copyrighted, and its terms do not permit extracting content from the service. Downloading a single track you already own on another format, or a song that is genuinely free to distribute, sits in a personal-use gray area in a lot of places. Sharing that file, selling it, or uploading it anywhere is not gray at all. The sensible line: keep a copy for yourself, do not pass it around, and buy or stream the music you love so the artist gets paid. Community discussions on the topic tend to land in the same place: regular listeners treat single-track downloads as fine for personal use and draw a hard line at redistribution.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I download a single song from Spotify?
Copy the song's link from Spotify (Share, then Copy Song Link, so the URL contains /track/), paste it into our converter, pick MP3 or another format and a bitrate, and download the one file. There is no account and nothing to install.
Can I download just one Spotify song for free?
Yes. Our tool works one track at a time with no fee, no signup, and no software. Paste the track link, choose your format, and grab the file.
Why can't I download a single song inside the Spotify app?
Spotify has no per-track download. Even on Premium you have to add the song to a playlist and download that, and what you get is an encrypted offline copy locked to the app, not a real file you can move.
Is a downloaded Spotify song 320 kbps or lossless?
At best it is 320 kbps lossy, because Spotify itself streams lossy audio that maxes out around 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis. No converter adds quality the source never had, so a FLAC or WAV of one track is a bigger file, not a higher-fidelity one.
Will the file keep the song title and artist?
Yes. The converter writes the title, artist, album, and cover art into the file, so it shows up correctly in your player instead of as an untitled track. Any wrong tag is a quick fix in a free tagger.
What if I want the whole album, not one song?
Use the album downloader for a full record or the playlist downloader for a list. Those pull every track at once and can hand you a zip. This page is for grabbing one song at a time.
Is it legal to download a Spotify song?
Spotify's terms do not allow extracting content, and the music is copyrighted. Personal-use copying of a single track sits in a gray area in many regions, while sharing, selling, or reuploading does not. Keep copies for yourself and support the artist.
References
- NoteBurner, how to download an individual song on Spotify (confirms Spotify has no direct single-song download and that the in-app route means creating a playlist with one track, Premium only, offline and app-locked).
- SoundGuys, how to convert Spotify to MP3 (the recording is only as good as the track played, and format choice does not change how it sounds, plus legality and safety cautions about converter sites).
- Spotify, Listen offline support page (offline download caps, the 30-day online requirement, downloads managed inside the app, and the free-tier limit).
- spotDL, open-source Spotify downloader (README) (confirms it matches and downloads from YouTube rather than pulling Spotify audio, which is why single-track matches can be the wrong version).