Audacity is free audio editing software available from SourceForge.net. We recommend the stable version - but you can try the beta version if you feel brave and geeky! You can use Audacity to remove excess silence or otherwise edit your songs before encoding them.

IMPORTANT: Audacity will not rip files from a CD. You must rip your cda files to an Audacity-compatible (wav, aif, au, ogg) format before encoding. However, if you have compatible files on your computer, this software will do the trick.

Follow the instructions from SourceForge to install the software on your computer. Once it is installed open it, and Under Edit Preferences and click on the File Formats tab.

Have a look at the MP3 Export Setup box. If the bit-rate box is greyed and not clickable, you will need to locate a lame_enc.dll file on your computer or download one to be able to reset the bit-rate. You can search for one on your computer or download one here. In case of difficulty, please view more detailed instructions at the Audacity Wiki.

Once that is done, change the Bit Rate to 192 kbps and click OK. (If the song is encoded at the wrong bit-rate, you will receive an error message AFTER SongPlanet has attempted to upload your song. Any previous version of the song (MP3) file on the site will have been deleted. However the song information (name, lyrics, photo, etc) will still be on your site).

From the File menu, choose "Open", navigate to your song file and open it.

From the File menu, choose "Export to MP3" and choose the location you would like to save the file.

You will then get a dialog box for editing the ID3 tags. You do not need to enter anything here. Click OK.

The song should then encode and be placed in the location you selected.

Please contact SongPlanet Artist Support (click here) if you have difficulties.