ONLINE RADIO RECORDING

Wouldn't it be great to have a TIVO for web radio to keep up on what's happening? Yes, it would and here's a look at some software that puts web radio at your mercy.

One slick piece of software is Radioshift, made by the folks at Rogue Amoeba.
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/radioshift/
It allows you to easily search through their very comprehensive radio guide (100,000+ listings) for the stations you want to record. You can then bookmark your favorites, and then via “subscribing” to a station you can schedule a recording. These recordings are done in the background without interrupting your own audio production work flow.

A key feature is that Radioshift supports recording multiple streams simultaneously. We have tested it extensively, recording several stations over several weeks, while recording various day parts. At the end of the month using our preferred audio editing app, we can then quickly scan through the recordings looking and listening, for the imaging vs the music vs commercial breaks.

Another feature highlight that we cannot forget to mention is that Radioshift can wake your computer from sleep or power it on when a recording is scheduled while you are away from your studio and everything is shut down. You can disable this feature if you want.

The latest update adds support for “thousands of new streams” as well as improved handling of stream errors. Go take a test drive with the demo, and we dare you to convince us that it isn’t worth the meager 32 bucks. Radioshift has us firmly hooked, but some of the following alternatives may suit your needs better.

Radio Gaga (MAC)
http://www.gagafactory.com/radiogaga/index.html

We liked the look and feel of Radio Gaga, but with only 10,000+ streams in their directory (radioshift has over 100,000), we had a heck of a time finding any of the radio stations that we wanted to record. Finding even major market stations was tough. Weird.

Snowtape (MAC)
http://www.snowtape.com/

Snowtape is a really great looking app, with some very cool features, especially for casual music listeners. Instant record button. Automatic split recordings at track boundaries (if the stream info is accurate). Auto removal of commercials. Integrated track editor.

Total Recorder (PC)
http://www.totalrecorder.com/productfr_trPRO.htm

The Pro Edition is the one to have if you want to record streams in the background, as well as do scheduled recordings. Very feature rich for the money.