Back in August I wrote about Screamer, a nice portable streaming radio app. KSoft's Icy Radio offers a similar experience with a couple of nice additions.

Icy Radio is completely portable - just download the zip archive and extract it to a folder. Apart from a large library of audio streams, Icy Radio includes several nice skins and streaming video support.

As with Screamer, you should expect some of the included streams not to work. After all, many of these feeds come from ad-supported sites and their owners probably aren't so keen on the idea of us listening to their music without having to view their banners.

The massive channel list is fully searchable and indexed by genre - more than 60 of them. Adding new stations is easy, and can be done one-at-a-time or in bulk from an XML file. Icy Radio's tabbed main window also sports a favorites list for your top channels and maintains a history of your recordings for easy playback.

Built-in recording supports MP3 and OGG (you'll need to download and unzip the plugin into your Icy Radio folder first). Unfortunately, video streams can't be recorded as of version 0.5.

Icy Radio is freeware for Windows only.

Yes, Madonna, who recently took some guitar lessons and strapped on a Les Paul, is going down the road of Radiohead and Oasis, as reported earlier in the week. Apparently the leading female pop vocalist over the last twenty or so years is dropping her record label about as hard as she dropped her Motown pride when she hit the bigtime with 'Like a Virgin'.

Apparently, she's going to distribute upcoming records through the auspices of one of the largest concert promoters, Live Nation. Whether or not this means downloadable music will be available for free, for tips, or at all remains to be seen. We're also not sure if this is a case of a bunch of rich has-been musicians taking up a fad cause, or if this really is a turning point in the digital distribution revolution (though Live Nation has no Net-based music distribution apparatus that we're aware of). Either way, it's nice to see people with Grammies finally using their pull to fight the power. How far is Madonna willing to go? Internet-only? DRM-free?

Interestingly, the Eagles also dumped Hollywood in favor of selling their most recent studio effort directly to Wal-Mart of all places, so we're seeing this backlash touch all genres. Like Madonna, the Eagles have not pledged DRM-free tracks. So one wonders if these noteworthy (but certainly non-earth-shattering) shifts in distribution stem from the artists' personal beliefs about media art, or if they're just ticked at folks who run the Old School.

This begs the question--if it was Hollywood that got these mega-musicians to where they are today, is it even possible to get that big as an unapologetic, unassisted indy? That is, can MySpace pave your road to stardom with its online-only SNOCAP distribution scheme? Thus far, it hasn't been the case. In order to ditch the record industry and call your own shots, it seems you already need to be a star.

If you've ever tried to record streaming audio in Windows, like a Skype call or a webcast, you may be aware of a simple setting that allows you to record any sound playing through your computer's sound card. All you have to do is:

1. Select your sound properties through the control panel or the sound icon in your system tray.
2. Click on the properties tab.
   
3. Check the recording box.
4. Make sure Wave Out Mix is selected (It's sometimes called stereo mix, or mono mix).
5. Now you should be able to set Wave Out as your default for recordings made by Audacity or other audio recording programs.

But, if you try the same trick with Windows Vista, you won't see an option for Wave Out Mix. It's not that the option's been left out of Vista, Microsoft just decided to hide it. Media Center Show podcast producer Ian Dixon has the instructions for enabling Wave Out recording:

1. Select sound from the control panel.
2. Select the recording tab.
3. Right click on the background of the tab and choose "show disabled devices."
4. Right click on Wave Out Mix and click enable.
5. Now it should work the same way as Wave Out Mix in Windows XP, allowing you to record any sound your computer makes.

GBPVR is a free PC PVR software package including media-center-like functionality, free for download. Unfortunately, it didn't support the PVR card I have in my PC, so I couldn't tell you how well it works. The interface looks nice, and it seems that the setup isn't too hard, so you'll have to let me know what you think of it if you install it on one of the supported cards listed. The currently supported TV tuner cards (as listed on the GBPVR website) are:

• Hauppauge PVR250, PVR250MCE, PVR350, PVR USB2, PVR150, PVR150MCE and the dual-tuner PVR500MCE
• ATI Theatre 550 Pro
• Emuzed Maui-I, Emuzed Maui-II, Emuzed Maui-III
• DVB-T and DVB-S devices with BDA drivers including:
  • Hauppauge Nova-S
  • Hauppauge Nova-T
  • Hauppauge Nova-T USB2
  • Pinnacle MediaCenter 300i
  • Twinhan DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-C
  • FireDTV DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-C
  • Dvico Fusion DVB-T
  • V-Box DTT-150
  • Blockgold GDI DVB-T
  • Lifeview FlyDVB-T
  • ...and lots of others
• GO7007SB based capture devices, such as Plextor PX-M402U, Plextor PX-TV402U and Lifeview TV Walker
  

The program requires Windows XP or 2000, and the Microsoft .net framework 2.0 installed to run. Windows 2000 requires MDAC 2.6 or higher as well. GBPVR is not open-source, but you can get started writing your own plug-ins in C#, VB.NET or C++ for it by visiting the developer's forum.

[Via PVRWire]

Call it caving in, call it giving up, but I like to call it getting smart. Recording company executives are finally realizing that people will never stop file sharing. Yahoo is hoping that by offering the first DRM-less album (by Jesse McCartney), people will go buy the album. I dare say they will. If people know they can do with their music what they want, they are more likely to buy it than an album with ultra-restrictive DRM and a smattering of grape jelly. Let's say hypothetically, in a perfect DRM-less world, what would happen? Would people share songs between each other, yes. Will they get a majority of their music from other people, maybe. My thought is that people will still go get music from online stores (at least new music) because it is more convenient than hitting up a friend for a particular song. So, if the recording companies are willing to give us DRM-free music, the only real problem is file-sharing applications. I like the p2p interfaces I have seen, but no one has figured out a way to use that clean interface that loads fast and is customizable with "legal" content. Not Apple, not Microsoft, not anyone. I am still waiting for this type of interface in a music store, no graphics and all kinds of cruft, I want a simple interface that I can use to download all my music (like the old Napster) but at least for now I can be happy with DRM-less content. Not that I like Jesse McCartney, but you know what I mean.

From WildVoice, who currently have a podcast studio application in beta, just released a new online recording option to their online personal media community. When you are logged into their site as a user you can click the record option to make an audio post, and one of the options is an online recorder.

I had signed up for an account there to test out the WildVoice Studio application so I went and logged into my account and the first time I tried using the online option, there was some kind of Java error and my browser locked up. But the second time it started fine and it allows you to record some audio and post it as an entry on your WildVoice Journal. You can also use the online option to leave audio comments on other member's posts.

The Home Recording and Instruments blog has news of a cool new software download for Mac and Windows that allows you to conduct musical jam sessions with your buddies on the Internet--in real time! This piece of software lets you use MIDI instruments--guitars, keyboards, and woodwinds--to collaborate on musical compositions from miles and miles away. Pretty cool stuff, especially if your guitarist lives in Florida and your drummer lives in Tokyo. Check out eJamming here.

Winamp creator Justin Frankel's new company Cockos has released REAPER, a "powerful but sensible" audio recorder and editor for Windows. As we've come to expect from Frankel, REAPER is a bit of a wonder: in a download of less than 1MB, Cockos has packed a ton of features such as unlimited tracks, multi-level undo and redo, plugin support, several input and output formats, and project template support. Currently at version 0.42 and under constant development, REAPER is currently freeware but will become "very reasonably priced" shareware once it hits 1.0.

Related posts:

• Frankel & Co. release Ninjam for transcontinental jam sessions