Hi Kashka,
Hubby uses this and it works great!
vidtomp3dotcom

Jasdip

Might want to look at this. It's an add on for several browsers. I use it on FF and it has always been reliable. If you need some other format than MP3, there are several audio editors that can be used for that. By the way, I have Audacity running under Windows 7 Ultimate with no problems. It is version 1.3 Beta.

Here is a link that might be useful: Try this

This works .... for Firefox.. plug in sort of...

Our
YouTube downloader
browser app is the fastest out there, allowing you to convert and download MP3s from YouTube up to 30x faster than any other downloader.

Uncheck the junk at install, unless of course you want it.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.bestvideodownloader.com/

Try this its what I use.

Paddy..

YouTube-mp3.org is the easiest online service for converting videos to mp3. You do not need an account, the only thing you need is a YouTube URL. We will start to convert the audiotrack of your videofile to mp3 as soon as you have submitted it and you will be able to download it. Different from other services the whole conversion process will be perfomed by our infrastructure and you only have to download the audio file from our servers. Because of this our software is platform-independent: You can use it with your Mac, a Linux PC or even an iPhone. All our conversions will be perfomed in high quality mode with a bitrate of at least 128 kBit/s. Do not worry, our service is completely free. We need approximately 3 to 4 minutes per video.

Here is a link that might be useful: YouTube TO mp3?

I see no one has answered your question about dangers. Here's my opinion. If you're just downloading stuff that you can view on YouTube, I doubt there is any significant risk. However, when I download something from an unknown source I save it to my Desktop without opening it, and then I right-click on it and do a virus scan on that one file. So far, I have not had a problem. I have acquired viruses from visiting unfamiliar sites, but not from places like YouTube. Just my experience....

Thanks kudzu, thats good info - how to virus scan 1 file. Actually I was wondering too about the downloading of the free software itself - what troublesome or annoying things that might contain.

What if anything is different about the software that you pay for vs the free stuff - might be worth it if theres less hassle involved?

There are many pieces of good, free software available. I easily have a dozen major software programs that I downloaded for free, and a number of them work better than the paid versions I previously used. And just because you pay for something doesn't mean it's problem-free. It's true that paid software from a reliable company is not going to contain a virus, but it might be the target of a virus because it's popular, or it might come with add-ons that you don't want. Whenever I am contemplating downloading some free software that looks good, I usually do a Google search with the name of the product +"review" or +"problem" or +"scam". If you see that a lot of people seem to be happy with it, or that you don't get significant negative hits, then it's probably safe. Even so, save it first and then give it a virus scan before installing.

The link I provided involves no software download, All you have to do is copy and paste the URL of the youtube audio you in to the window and there software does the work for you, it converts it in to and mp3 file that you then download from the servers and all you have to do is save to you computer.

Different from other services the whole conversion process will be performed by there infrastructure and you only have to download the audio file from there servers.

Paddy..