For Idol songs, this is a pretty good source from the Top 12 on.
Note: If you have a Ad Blocker, you’ll want to turn it on now, some of the ads aren’t child-friendly.
http://new-music-now.blogspot.com/
To download the performances, find a post with ‘Live’ in the title, and click the desired performance. This brings up the page that plays the mp3. Click “Download this File”, then click the “Download Now!” button. Then the timer runs down, click “here”. To save the performance mp3, click “Save” and select a place to save it in.
To download the studio recordings, go to a post that says Studio Recordings in the title, and click the desired song. This will take you to a page where you must enter a captcha, then click “Download Now”. Click “Save” on the window that comes up and specify where to put the file.
For songs from the Top 16, 20, and 24, this site is the only complete source I’ve found. They are very buried, so it would be beneficial to use that site’s search feature to find performances.
To Download, click on the performance post you want, right click on the Bolded link near the bottom of the post, select “Save Target As” from the menu, and specify where to save the file.
For all of these files, when they are done downloading, the window will either close by itself, or wait for more instructions. If they stay up, clicking “Open” will open the file in your default media player, “Open Folder” will bring you to that place the file is saved, and close will close the window.
Netizen, thanks for the link to the download site (I went to the first one); it seems to work pretty well. But you’re right that the ads are NOT family-friendly! LOL! I downloaded one song that was close to 6MB and it took about 30 minutes at 31 kbps. I’m downloading a 10MB song right now (studio version of “Billie Jean”) and I expect it to be done about the time I’m ready for bed. :) Thanks, all!