As of 1.8, assets are stored by hash, which makes it fiddly to listen to Minecraft's amazing ambient soundtrack outside the game.
This script can be used to copy music files to appopriately-named and organised .ogg
files for easier listening.
0. If you happen to have PowerShell 3.0, you might be able to just save and execute extract_mc_music.ps1 and then skip to step 5
1. Install Node.js. Actually, you don't even have to "install". You can just download the stand-alone zip archived version, extract it, and start a CMD shell in the subdirectory with node.exe in it.
2. Save extract_mc_music.js to your freshly extracted node directory.
npm install fs-extra
node extract-music.js
You should see output similar to this, after which .ogg
files will be available in a new %AppData%\.minecraft\assets\sounds\
directory:
./objects/87/87722a59c8d488370f3d430cd4c97a3161081785 -> ./sounds/music/menu/menu3.ogg
./objects/df/df1ff11b79757432c5c3f279e5ecde7b63ceda64 -> ./sounds/music/game/hal1.ogg
./objects/62/6254527d626a2c7d80901cc2e62dce3ba4bd81f6 -> ./sounds/music/game/creative/creative6.ogg
...