Recording streaming music on your hard drive?
The Internet is the medium par excellence for discovering new music, and the number of interesting music-streaming sites is booming. But how can you record streaming music and save it on your hard disk?
reappraisal
Until a couple of years ago, the Internet enjoyed a pretty unsavoury reputation when it came to music. Illegal download sites such as Napster (http://www.napster.com - today a decent paying site) were the main reason for this negative image. However, these days there are many services offering “streaming” songs, which means you can listen to them online without having to load the entire song first. We’ve already reviewed excellent services such as Shuffler (http://www.shuffler.fm- songs in different genres) and Wolfgang’s Vault (http://www.wolfgangsvault.com - live concerts and interviews). But there are others which we can heartily recommend as well: Musicovery (http://www.musicovery.com - music according to genre, age, mood, etc.), PlaylistNow.fm (http://www.playlistnow.fm - songs matching a keyword), 22Tracks (http://www.22tracks.com - the latest songs in 22 genres) and Deezer (http://www.deezer.com - just about anything).
Freecorder
But perhaps you’d like to record music streams and save them on your hard disk? This is possible with Freecorder (http://www.freecorder.com), a toolbar nestling itself into your browser. The Record Audio button lets you record anything that is currently played on your computer (in other words: anything you’re hearing through the loudspeakers). After a click on Stop Recording, a window appears containing the recorded file.
Tip. It’s best to give this file a name you’ll recognise immediately (right-click and choose Rename). In Settings you can configure where and in which format the recording should be saved. However, The Convert button lets you convert your recordings into another format afterwards.
Note. Freecorder also allows you to record YouTube videos on your hard disk, whilst the History button even lets you save recently viewed videos.
Mp3 My Mp3
Mp3 My Mp3 (http://www.mp3mymp3.com) is a standalone program which also records streaming audio on your computer. We like the VU meter showing the recording volume. You can adjust the recording level if you see it gets “in the red”. The software also has built-in silence detection, which can be useful for saving one recording as separate tracks. Renaming recordings is a breeze, thanks to the batch function.
Don’t forget!
Don’t forget that if you record music from the Internet, there are author’s rights to be respected. This means that the tools reviewed here should be used for private purposes only. Also note that these tools record all the sounds on your computer. For instance, when an e-mail arrives while you’re making a recording, the notifying beep will be recorded as well. So it’s best to close your e-mail program temporarily.
Editing
To clean up your recordings (cut them into separate tracks, remove sections, apply effects, etc.), it’s best to use a dedicated tool. We prefer two free programs which we reviewed earlier, Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) and - even better - Wavosaur (http://www.wavosaur.com).
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