StationRipper -- Record mp3s from Internet Radio

Back when I was a teen, I got a lot of free music by recording it off the radio on cassette or 8-track tapes. (I know I'm dating myself by mentioning I had an 8-track recorder.) This was a free and legal way to get copies of music. Heck, one local station would play an album straight through so you could easily record it without ads. While the RIAA hasn't yet managed to criminalize recording from the radio in the US, radio isn't what it used to be. With large companies buying up hundreds of formerly locally owned stations, it can be hard to find anything worth listening to -- let alone recording -- on the radio in the US, even in large urban areas. Fortunately, there is Internet radio with a broad select of stations from around the world.

StationRipper makes it easy to record sounds as properly labeled mp3 files from any Internet radio station that broadcasts a shoutcast or icecast stream. The freeware version of Stationripper will only record two stations at the same time (you can record from up to 600 stations at the same time in the payware versions), but that is enough to record a lot of music without much effort other than selecting the station(s).

Here's a list of the major features of the freeware version.

Record Shoutcast Radio & TV into MP3's.
MP3's labeled with the correct Band & Song name.
Record 2 stations at one time
Drag and drop iTunes Radio.
Download Podcasts.
Don't re-record of songs you already have.
Auto-Set Genre from Station Portal.
Manually set all Genre's.
iTunes or MediaMonkey integration.
MSN Integration.
Adjust track splitting settings.

StationRipper is easy to use. You tell it where to store the mp3s, select a station from the embedded web page interface, and it starts recording with the next song played. You can fiddle with a few settings and the like, but that's basically all there is to it. StationRipper isn't perfect, For example, it sometimes cuts off a few seconds from the beginning or end of a song and it sometimes mistakes commercials for songs, but it is a great way to build up your music collection legally (at this time in the US, at least) and at no cost. Quality of the mp3 copy varies with the bitrate of the radio station's audio stream. As you might expect, the higher the bitrate, the better, so you will need to take that into account when you select stations to record.

Rating: 4.5
Operating System: Windows (with Internet Explorer installed)
License: Commercial Freeware
Price: Free
Version: 2.71
Web Site: http://www.stationripper.com/

[tags]Windows, StationRipper, Internet Radio, mp3, Free Music[/tags]