Thus, all those Internet Radio saving applications like Raima Radio, Stationripper or Phonostar have not made it into the final round. I also did not want to use huge media clients such as Windows Media Player that would simply suck up to many resources. What I wanted was a lightweight music player with the capability of recording Internet Radio streams.

I did find it. XMPlay is the client that is lightweight and is able to record Internet Radio streams. XMPlay uses just 6.8 Megabytes of Ram when playing high-quality Internet Radio which is as lightweight as it can get.

The function to record Internet Radio is already implemented and can be accessed by simply right-clicking the stream url in the music player and selecting ‘Write to Disk’ from the menu. This saves the stream from that point on until you stop the recording.

It is possible to record the stream as one huge mp3 file or save individual tracks which is probably the better and organized way to record Internet Radio.

The only reason why I would choose another application would be if I wanted to schedule a recording or record more than one station at a time. Raima Radio would be the software of my choice if I wanted to do any of the above mentioned tasks.

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XMPlay
Raima Radio

Install it from the link above and make sure you install WinPcap as well when the installation routine asks you. Once installed you open it and enable the advanced mode (under File). Url Snooper automatically analyses the traffic that your networks card manages and displays every url it detects. To make things easier you should activate the protocol filter and enable multimedia url’s simplify all. This makes sure that only multimedia urls are displayed and everything else is filtered.

You can test the urls by right-clicking and selecting to play the current url which should open the appropriate video player and play the file.

We need a second tool that records the video or audio from the urls that we found. One great tool that was unfortunately discontinued is Streambox VCR. Install Streambox and switch back to url snooper. Click on general options and right-click in the last text field.

Choose Add Link and browse to the dir in which streambox vcr was installed. Select the following file StreamBoxVCR1Beta31\vcr_31smfplus.exe, leave command arguments blank and add a descriptive name to it.

Once done switch back to search. Whenever you right-click on an url you have the option to load it into streambox and automatically download it from there.

Sometimes the automatic transfer from url snopper to streambox is not working. A workaround would be to copy the link in url snooper by right-clicking on it and choosing edit -> paste link in streambox to save it.

This method was tested with various sites including C-Span, BBC and the movies guide at real player.

Take a look at this short video introduction to url snooper, it is really helpful to understand the concept.

A tool that is able to save windows media streams is SDP (free of course), try this if streambox is not able to save those streams.

This article will give you a tutorial on how to start stream ripping and legally download all the latest mp3 files to your computer. I can´t speak for all countries though so you better check out if recording music from radio is legal in your country.

All you need is a version of the stream ripper program available at sourceforge.net. Select the version best suited for you, there are versions for pc, mac and unix as well as a winamp 5 plugin. The easiest way is probably simply to download the plugin for use in winamp 5. If you don´t have winamp head over to winamp.com and download it now.

There is a good installation tutorial on the project site, if you have probs installing go there, this should do the trick and get you started.

After installing the plugin you are prompted to start winamp with the stream ripper plugin, select yes and you see the standard winamp screens and the additional stream ripper window. A stream ripper icon should appear in the taskbar next to your clock. Right-click it and select options, we should configure the program before we start using it.

The most important option is File / Output. You select a directory where the mp3 files should be saved. All others are optional, you can define under which name the song should be saved as, the default is Stream Artist – Title, you probably want to change that.

After saving the options we are ready to select a stream and start the ripping process. I suggest the following two websites for an excellent variety of streams that you can rip. The first is shoutcast.com which has more than 30 genres and thousands of radio stations. There should be stations for every taste.

The second one is the stream directory of xiph.org which also has a excellent selection and genres to select.

I suggest your streams should have at least 128 Kbit if you are on broadband, if you can spare it select stations with higher kbit but remember that the saved mp3 files will be larger this way and consume more bandwidth when transferring.

My first selection is the number 1 stream on shoutcast, CLUB 977 The Hitz Channel (HIGH BANDWIDTH) station. Its important that winamp shows artist and title in its windows. This ensures that the stream sends this information and the files will be named correctly. If no information is send the files will get default names and you will have no clue about artist and title later.

When the stream starts in winamp stream ripper will automatically show a dialog “press start to rip “ip”". Just press start and stream ripper starts its service and saves the files to the location you specified. You can leave it on until you run out of hd space or have to shutdown the pc. If you want to stop simply select stop and the ripping process stops immediately.

That’s all there is to know, enjoy this fine tool and watch your music collection grow legally.