A few weeks back, I wrote about my nascent investigation into the world of rhythm and blues. Part of that post was dedicated to the wonderful Blues in Hi-Fi radio show on KTRU. I’ve been wondering if there was another place on the Web where I listen to the same kind of stuff, and maybe even record some mp3s from the Web stream. This morning, I came across a nifty desktop program that makes it pretty easy to:
- Find a radio station (choose from over 12,200 streams)
- Listen to music
- Record mp3s
Download Squad describes the RadioSure’s simple virtues:
Radio Sure is a free application for Windows that allows you to turn in to (and record) more than 12,000 streams. It’s very similar to Screamer, though I had more success getting stations to play on Radio Sure. Each station is tagged with its country of origin, primary language, and genre for convenient sorting. I’d like to see the genres handled a bit differently – for example, Punk instead of Rock – Punk and to be able to filter the listings. The interface is a little much for me, but it’s not quite Fugly Friday material.
Those minor shortcomings aside, Radio Sure keeps things simple and just plain works. You can record any stream to MP3 in bitrates up to 256k and maintain a list of your favorites for fast tuning. Tracks can be auto-split, and the program will even skip recording tracks you’ve previously saved.
Sure enough, I was able to find a couple of stations that had exactly what I was looking for, including The Classic Soul Network and the Classic Blues station on 1Club.FM. Both stations started without a hiccup and they sounded great. And yeah, KTRU worked great, too. But the best part is RadioSure’s recording feature, which automatically splits and names tracks, while placing the files into the folder of your choice.
Sure there are more full-featured programs that can also record Web radio. My default player, MediaMonkey, can do something similar using the StreamRipper plugin (which can also be deployed in WinAmp). But RadioSure is a much simpler, elegant solution that just about anyone can use without trying too hard.
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In other internet music news, my favorite Web-based music service, Lala.com got a significant upgrade this week. I’ve not seen another Web site that will allow you to easily listen to your entire mp3 catalog from any computer. And no one sells 6 million songs more cheaply.
Taking advantage of another new Web tool, Screentoaster.com, I recorded a screencast explaining why I love Lala.com so damn much. It’s a bit rambly because I’ve never done anything like this before. But if you’re interested, click away.
Screentoaster is fairly interesting in its own right. You can record high-quality webcasts without installing any software. All you need is a microphone and you’re good to go. This video was my first try using the service, and it worked perfectly.
Very cool stuff. I’m gonna have to check out lala.
well i signed up, installed the ‘music mover’, the music mover searched for songs to move and… it didn’t find any. my itunes is full of songs, why didn’t it find them? there doesnt seem to be any command for re-running the application to search again, or any kind of help doc and there doesn’t seem to be anything i can even try to do with it. So i’m a bit at a loss right now with this. any suggestions?
Check your settings. Make sure the Folder settings are set to where your music is. If you’ve got your music set in another, non-default folder, it might not be locating it.
Also, are you using a Mac or PC? I’ve got a PC, so I can’t opine about the quality of the Mac uploader.
I’m using a mac, and the problem does seem to be that the app can only point to the default music folder. I dont have my music there for a couple of reasons, and there is no way to adjust the app to point to a different folder. How hard would it be to give you the option to point the app to a different folder? very lalame.
Ok, i figured out (with Lala’s help) and now my songs are uploading to the site. Appx loading time = 1 day 20 hours… i guess i have a lot of songs…
It took several days to upload and match my 23k tracks. But after that slow initial process, new songs are added very quickly.
Thanks, Marshall. I’ve been looking for a way to record my own radio show segment without success. I’ll try this application out this Thursday!
Marshall, you are the king of the WordPress layout. Even when you are talking about some band that is like ludes to me you make it look all purdy like.
It’s all Windows Live Writer. It’s just like using a word processor, and it center aligns both pics and videos, and it automatically uploads photos. I don’t do any heavy lifting at all.
Cool, good to know. Thanks. Nice post too, by the way!