Stream Harvester is a new program that has been released by the developer in an early stage of development. The program currently supports recording the playlist formats pls and m3u if they link to the media formats mp3, ogg or nsv. That covers most of the Internet radio streams on popular services like Shoutcast or Icecast.

The Internet radio recorder offers a semi-automatic approach. New radio stations need to be added to the program manually. One interesting option here is to select different storage locations for the recorded radio streams.

Every radio station that has been added this way is then listed in the program’s main interface which contains the options to manage the recordings.

It is here possible to start and stop the recording of individual radio stations. Stream Harvester can record multiple stations at once, the only limit is defined by the user’s Internet connection and PC.

One interesting feature is the relay option which can relay a stream so that it can be accessed by another application on the same computer system as well.

Stream Harvester is a simple program that can be used to easily record multiple Internet radio stations at once. The software program is compatible with Windows and Linux and can be downloaded from the Google Code project website.

The program uses three independent windows to control the recordings. Windows 1 is the start window with all options and configuration settings. The user can define the download path in here, load radio stations, change the skin, configure the build in Live365 support, change the default stream title format or generate a command line command for this preset which can then be used in batch files, loaded during startup or used in the Windows Task Scheduler.

Windows 2 lists all radio stations that have been added by the developer and user. It is possible to remove, add or edit the radio stations in the list.

The third and final window is the music player and recorder. It uses basic controls to play, record, pause and stop the music. The MP3 VCR tries to identify the name of the song so that it can save each tune with a descriptive file name. This is however only possible if the radio stations are including the title in the stream.

One interesting option is the ability to record radio stations for a certain time. This, in combination with the option to launch the program from the command line make it possible to record specific radio stations regularly.

The MP3 VCR can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system including Windows 7.

An easier solution to record iTunes radio is the Streamripper based radio recorder Stationripper. Stationripper comes with many additional features including support to record various Internet radio streams like those from iTunes radio but also Last.fm.

The best aspect is that it is actually very easy to start recording the streams. Here is how it is done:

Start by downloading Stationripper from the official website. The free version is just fine but comes with a few limitations like being only able to record two Internet radio streams at a time or missing, more advertisement than the commercial versions (not a huge problem if you minimize the application after starting to record the iTunes radio streams) or support for last.fm or Pandora. The free version offers on the other hand everything that is needed to record up to two iTunes radio stations at once. It does impose a limitation of 25 songs per session before the application needs to be restarted.

Start Stationripper after installation and start iTunes as well. The most comfortable way is to place the applications next to each other on the computer screen.

All that needs to be done now is to drag and drop the selected iTunes radio station into the lower part of the Stationripper interface to start recording the iTunes radio station. Free users can drag and drop two stations into the interface which will automatically be recorded from that moment on.

The directory where the iTunes radio songs get saved can be changed in the program’s options. Stationripper will automatically created a directory in the download folder for every iTunes radio station that is being dragged and dropped into the interface. The songs will be saved in the format band name – song name in the directory including an image of the record or album if available.

Here is a second solution if you do not like the 25 song limit that is imposed on users. You do need the latest version of Streamripper for this. Install Streamripper (complete) and open it and iTunes. Locate the iTunes radio station that you want to record. Drag and drop it into the left sidebar of iTunes to create a playlist.

Select that new playlist and right-click on the only entry in the song list. Select Get Info from the menu to open detailed information about that radio station.

A section entitled Where should be visible in the first tab that is showing up. Where lists the url of the iTunes radio stream. This url needs to be copied. A click on Edit Url will open the url which can then be copied with Ctrl C after selecting all of it (or by selecting the url and right-clicking it and selecting Copy from the context menu).

We need to open or activate Streamripper now. A right-click in its interface will display a context menu with the option to Load a url.

The full url of the iTunes radio station needs to be pasted into the form. A click on OK and on Start in the main menu will start the identification and connection process.

Streamripper will also create separate directories for every iTunes radio stream. It usually can identify song names and artists as well. Best of all, it will record as long as it is running. Users who want to record multiple iTunes radio stations can simply open another instance of Streamripper and repeat the process.

Last.fm Downloader (via Life Rocks) is a free portable software program for the Windows operating system that can connect to any last.fm radio station to record the music that is played there. The software is absolutely fool proof as it provides only a few buttons and configuration options.

The url of the radio station has to be pasted into the application which is the only thing needed to start the recordings. Settings make it possible to change the download location of the music files, to define a maximum size limit or download file count limit, to start an external application if a limit is reached and whether to download cover art and make use of a deep folder layout while downloading.

The last.fm software will download three different songs at a time from the radio stream and save them to the local computer. Several songs are shown that are next to be downloaded from last.fm.

The downloaded songs will be named artist – title.mp3 by default and \Artist\Album\Artist – Title.mp3 if the deep folder structure has been selected.

An alternative to Last.fm Downloader is Last Sharp.