Streamwriter -- Easily Record Music From Internet Radio Stations
While the recoding companies would like people to think that they have to pay -- and often pay through the nose -- for music, there are still a number of ways to legally get music free via the Internet. There are thousands of Internet Radio stations for example, and it is perfectly legal (at least in the US) to record music from radio stations -- over the air or over the Internet. There are a large number of good payware programs for recording music from Internet radio stations. Most of them look better than streamWriter in the interface department, but few have useful features beyond those provided by the free streamWriter.
streamWriter can record from multiple Internet radio stations simultaneously. It has a auto-updating list of Internet radio stations. It can save each song in a separate file (unless the station purposely prevents this feature from working. It can look for specific songs and only record those. It can skip short pieces under the assumption that they are ads. It can record all songs -- but not duplicates of those it has already recorded, and much more.
Features: (as listed on the streamWriter web site)
- Record as many streams as you want at the same time (MP3/AAC)
- Automatically record a wishlist's song when it's playing on a stream
- Track splitting with silence detection
- Function for manual cutting of saved titles
- Tracks are named by a given pattern
- Short songs (ads) can be skipped
- ID3 tagging and script-based postprocessing option
- Listen to streams
- Stream browser
- Multilingual (English/German)
- Can be installed or used in portable mode
This little program does a wonderful job of recording music from Internet radio stations. Set it up to record from 10 stations overnight and you'll wake up to a huge collection of free music. Sure, it will not be all music that you like or want, but if you select your stations carefully, you will be surprised how much free music that you do want you can get without any real effort on your part. Free and legal music is a good thing. Free music obtained legally with free software is a great thing. streamWriter just does it.
Rating: 5.0
Operating System: Windows XP or later
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Tested: 2.0.0
Web Site: http://streamwriter.org/en/
