Record MP3 Streams with Screamer Radio

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 21, 2007
Updated • May 27, 2013
Music, Music and Video
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I reviewed the Internet radio recorder Phonostar a couple of days ago that enabled you to save the stream of more than 4000 radio stations to your system. It had the big disadvantage that it was not saving the name and artist as the file name of saved songs which left you with unnamed mp3 files that you had to identify manually.

Screamer Radio on the other hand uses the meta data most Internet radio stations include in the stream to save mp3 files with all the relevant information that you need to identify the song name and artist.

Screamer Radio supports Shoutcast and Icecast mp3 streaming as well as WMA and AAC streaming. A big list of supported radio stations is available at the official screamer radio website. The preset tab holds a large list of radio stations which are directly accessible through Screamer Radio. Just choose a station and Screamer will automatically start the playback. Just hit REC if you want to start recording streams which will then be saved in the default location.

A great feature of Screamer Radio is that you can hit REC even in the middle of a song and it will still be saved completely if it was not the first song of that radio station. Screamer Radio uses a buffering technique to make this possible.

Best of all it is free, does not use many system resources and can be run from the system tray. The only feature that is missing is the ability to save more than one station at a time.

You can use the program to listen to Internet radio if you want, as it comes with all the capabilities to do so. A disadvantage is the fact that you can only record the station you are listening to, and not other stations, or record one and listen to another. I guess it is possible to run multiple instances of the program on your PC but that is not really that comfortable as well.

Tips

  • The first thing that you may want to do is make sure the recording folder is set up correctly.  Click on Settings > Preferences > Recording to make sure of that or modify it if it is not.  Here you can also change the file pattern if you want to add date information to the file name or as a folder.
  • The program uses a 10 Megabyte buffer. You can modify the value or set it to 0 to disable buffering completely. This is however only recommended if you are not experiencing any connection issues as you may end up with corrupt songs otherwise.
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Comments

  1. Justin said on November 30, 2011 at 10:18 am
    Reply

    The warning message about AAC streams when you load streams is because you don’t have the free Orban AAC/aacPlus Player Plugin installed.

    http://codecpack.co/download/Orban-aacPlus-Player-Plugin.html

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 30, 2011 at 10:56 am
      Reply

      Justin, thanks for the information.

  2. santosh said on December 1, 2011 at 12:43 am
    Reply

    does this support AAC ? or only mp3 streaming

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on December 1, 2011 at 1:43 am
      Reply

      I’d say it supports all pls streams but I have not tried that so cannot verify it 100%.

  3. Barnabas said on August 3, 2012 at 5:15 pm
    Reply

    Thank you Martin for a most informative and viable solution (it allowed me to play streams from a Netherland internet radio station in my WMP)! Continued success to you!

    Barnabas (USA)

  4. AppleRome said on October 7, 2012 at 7:31 am
    Reply

    Your steps’ recommendation is still valid until 7th October 2012.. Thank you very much !!

  5. Laura said on December 1, 2012 at 4:41 pm
    Reply

    Thank you!

  6. sak2005 said on December 9, 2014 at 8:03 pm
    Reply

    You must convert file.pls to file.m3u
    because file.pls open with winamp and file.m3u open with wmp.

  7. Lithium said on February 10, 2017 at 11:10 am
    Reply

    Hi
    2017 still kicking on Windows 7
    Thx a ton

  8. Dennis said on April 18, 2017 at 4:05 am
    Reply

    Hey, even i can do it, i stumbled through it and it works great! The only instruction advice i will add as i had to figure this out, when the wmp box opens that says save or open the bar on right says wmp click that drop down and select “open pls in wmp” once you do that it will work . Took me quite some time to discover that as i am no computer expert by any means. Having said that, previously i had downloaded codec packages and something about aac. None did any good. This rocks, i listen to a lot of internet radio and a number of them have dropped flash player and getting wmp to work had been a nightmare. So many thanks for this great solution to another problem that Micro-Hell will not even address. Peace- Out

  9. stephen marshall said on March 19, 2019 at 2:07 am
    Reply

    openplsinwmp came in a zip file. I unpacked it, and didn’t find anything that looks like an executable, and even the files in the “doc” folder were in a format windows didn’t recognize. I’m not stupid. you said it would open effortlessly. It didn’t. This a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down.

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