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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

Stream and record 12,000 stations with Radio Sure


Services like Last.fm might have a little advantage over regular streaming internet radio when it comes to cool factor, but it never hurts to have one more way to listen to and discover new music.

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.

It's available both with an installer and as a portable version, and runs on Windows PCs.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware

Save Last.fm and Aupeo tracks to MP3 with Music Downloader

I wrote about LastSharp a while back - it's an application developed in C# that allows you to download tracks from Last.fm. If you'd prefer an option that doesn't require the .Net runtimes, there's Last.fm Music Downloader - which is also totally portable.

Launch Music Downloader and drop in a Last.fm url - it can be a similar artists link (http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Tool/similarartists) or global tag (http://www.last.fm/listen/globaltags/polka). Click the start button, and the playlist begins downloading to your hard drive. There are a few settings you can tweak: default save folder, album art downloading, download speed limit, and maximum number of downloads.

Files are automatically named artist - track title.mp3 by default, and the deep folder layout option will sort them into \artist\album subdirectories.

It's also worth noting that I was able to download tracks from Aupeo - even though the service isn't available to me in Canada. Finding artist links can be a little tricky, though, without access to their web site.

You might encounter some trouble downloading from Last.fm from time to time like I did, but that's something I fully expect when using an app like this. It's not really the way Last.fm intends its library to be used, after all.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware

Download Internet radio tracks with Free Music Zilla

Free Music Zilla
There's no shortage of applications that let you save audio streams from internet services ranging from Shoutcast to Pandora. And well, Free Music Zilla is another one of those applications.

What sets Free Music Zilla apart from some of the competitors in this space is that it's 100% free, and incredibly easy to use. Just install the application and it will hang out in your system tray. When you visit a site with streaming audio like Pandora, Last.fm, IMEEM, MySpace, eSnips, or several others, Free Music Zilla will give you the option of saving each song.

While the program officially works with all the web services mentioned above plus a few more, we've found that it also does a pretty good job of catching songs from unsupported web sites like the recently launched MeeMix.

The only thing that would make Free Music Zilla better would be automatic file naming. Right now, any track you download will have a string of numbers for a name, so you'll have to tag and name files on your own. Of course, we don't have to tell you that in many situations, using programs like this to download streaming audio may be illegal. But we can also think of plenty of instances when you might want to use a program like Free Music Zilla to download public domain music or songs licensed under Creative Commons.

[via TechCrunch]

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