These days, there is a plethora of audio content available to stream over the Internet. Even traditional terrestrial radio often offers content streamed over the Web, diversifying the choices for how consumers can enjoy music and other audio. Although the legality is questionable, there are--and will always be--ways to record these streams. Streamed audio recordings for music are not going to offer the same sound quality as a ripped CD or even a purchased MP3, but it's a good option for talk programs and mixes that might not be available in other formats. This tutorial will show you how to record streamed audio as an MP3; just be sure to read the usage rules for any recording source before beginning.
Editors' note: This tutorial was completed using Windows XP.
Cost: Free
Time commitment: Varies
System Requirements: Windows
In mid-July, Verizon began automatically pushing Slacker Radio to BlackBerry Storm phones. Starting Tuesday, Verizon's partnership with Slacker Radio begins extending to BlackBerry Tour devices in its U.S. network as well.
As part of the agreement, Slacker Radio will hook into Verizon's V Cast store (which itself taps the Rhapsody catalog), giving BlackBerry Storm and Tour users the capability to purchase one of 4.5 million songs.
Slacker Radio's streaming music player competes heavily with similar Internet radio services, particularly Pandora.
What's not to love about the online radio site Pandora? There's simply no better way to hear great music with a minimum of fuss; just type in a song or artist that fits your mood, and Pandora creates a stream of music just for you.
Unfortunately, Pandora's emphasis on simplicity can be a turn-off for those who crave more sophisticated features. But just like the mythical box from which it's named, there's more to Pandora than meets the eye. By digging deeper into menus and settings, Pandora power users can finesse some pretty cool tricks from the deceptively simple site.
Watch our CNET How-To video for a tour of some Pandora features you may have missed.
Pandora's free, ad-supported Internet radio service has attracted millions of registered users, and spawned one of the more popular iPhone Apps. On Tuesday, May 19, Pandora announced the launch of Pandora One, a premium version of its popular, free, Internet radio service.
For a yearly fee of $36, Pandora's power users can upgrade to the Pandora One service, which offers ad-free playback, higher-quality audio (192Kbps), extended playback time, and a dedicated desktop player. The announcement of Pandora One comes hot on the heels of news that the company will soon add lyrics to its radio feeds using Gracenote technology.
(Via Hypebot)
Since its release in July of 2008, the Pandora Internet radio iPhone app has been one of our favorites and a consistent top download from Apple's iTunes App Store. Pandora's uncluttered and intuitive interface, coupled with its unique knack for song recommendations, makes it an ideal no-fuss app for anyone looking to add streaming music capabilities to their iPhone or iPod Touch.
Pandora added many new features to version 2.0 of its iPhone app, but its clean, intuitive Now Playing screen remains unchanged.
In version 2.0, Pandora adds several new features without undermining the simplicity that made the original app so great. Users can now listen to 30-second previews of bookmarked tracks directly within the app, without bouncing over into the iTunes store. You can also send links to songs now, as well as stations, to contacts from your address book.
Creating new personalized radio stations in Pandora has never been easier. As before, Pandora lets you create stations by entering any artist, song, or genre as a starting point. In addition to creating stations from scratch, users can now create stations on the fly based around any artist or song on Pandora's Now Playing screen or user bookmarks.
Pandora 2.0 now offers biographical information for the currently playing artist right from the Now Playing screen (similar to the Last.fm app), as well as a detailed account of why each song was chosen to be included in your station. Pandora also added a track progress bar to the Now Playing screen, showing how far along you are within a particular song.... Read More
Thanks to Pandora, the Chumby has graduated from an overqualified alarm clock to the most adorable part of my living room Hi-Fi.
(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)For the past eight months, my latte-colored Chumby has been at my bedside, waking me up with an '80s music mix from Shoutcast and feeding my insomnia with RSS tech news. Today, however, I ceremoniously relocated my Chumby from my nightstand to my living room stereo--right between my Zune and my turntable.
The sudden relocation was caused by invisible Chumby fairies silently upgrading my Chumby's firmware yesterday (Hooray for free upgrades!), adding Pandora Internet radio to an already impressive list of streaming music options. The Chumby is meant to be a very flexible, multipurpose gadget, so the fact that I've been using it a glorified alarm clock is a shame. Maybe I've just been in denial over the Chumby's suitability as an Internet radio receiver, but it took the addition of Pandora to finally motivate me to relocate it to my living room.
Aside from the Grace ITC-IR1000B, the $179 Chumby is now one of the cheapest ways to get a standalone Pandora jukebox into your living room. It's definitely the most adorable solution (sorry Grace). Sure, you can get more powerful Pandora systems, like the $300 Logitech Squeezebox Boom, or more sophisticated systems like the $999 Sonos Digital Music System, but for me, a Chumby and a $5 RCA-to-minijack cable is the perfect combination of price, style, and capability.
The Chumby version of Pandora is visually very similar to the Web version.
(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)The Chumby version of Pandora doesn't deliver the exact same experience as Pandora on the Web, but the best parts are still here. After logging in to your Pandora account using the onscreen keyboard (for creating a new account) you can listen to any station you've already created, pause and skip through songs, adjust volume, rate tracks, bookmarks songs, view the artist and title information of the currently playing song (including album art), and even create new stations on the fly by typing in artist or song names. The only drawbacks are that you can't purchase songs directly or share songs with friends the way you can with the Web or iPhone versions of Pandora.
To be fair, the majority of Pandora-compatible receivers lack these same features, and few of them offer niceties such as album art and touch-screen keyboards. With the way I have the Chumby set up currently, I'll probably just let Pandora run perpetually in the background, without much interaction, and leave the station creation and playlist grooming for those moments when I've got the Web version of Pandora running on my computer at work.
As free upgrades go, the addition of Pandora to the Chumby is pure gravy. The sound quality is good, the interface is slick, and the price is perfect. After eight months, I'm glad to finally see the Chumby take on more responsibilities around the house.
Version 2.0 of Last.fm's free music streaming and discovery application for the iPhone and iPod Touch is now available through the iTunes App Store, offering significant performance and design improvements over the original version we reviewed in August.
Last.fm hasn't added any notable new features to their application, however, a few features have been enhanced, and an overhauled design makes the user experience more intuitive and attractive. For instance, the main menu is now divided into two tabs that separate Last.fm's streaming radio features from its social networking capabilities, making the experience less confusing for first time users. The radio menu tab is the default menu screen, offering a listing of your preferred personal music channels, along with Last.fm recommendations and a prominent red button for creating a new music channels. By clicking over from the Radio tab into the Profile view, Last.fm regulars can still dig deeper into their top artists, albums, and tracks, keep tabs on local music events, and peek into the listening habits of their friends.
Last.fm's original main menu (left) was dull and a little confusing for anyone unfamiliar with Last.fm's lingo and social features. Version 2.0's main menu splits the application's radio and social features into two tabs across the bottom and emphasizes the immediate gratification of creating new personalized music stations.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The Last.fm Now Playing screen has also undergone an extreme makeover. Album artwork is now displayed clearly and not superimposed with song information. A volume bar is a permanent fixture on the bottom of the Now Playing screen, and many controls have been consolidated for the sake of simplicity. A collapsible menu lets you add your own personal song tags directly from the playback screen, along with options to save the song to a playlist or share it among your personal contacts or Last.fm friends.
A distinction between Last.fm and other personal Internet radio applications such as Pandora, is the ability to view and save an artist's current touring information. An On Tour button appears next to the name of currently touring artists on the Last.fm playback screen, allowing you to browse tour dates on an internal calendar and flag any shows you're considering.
The Now Playing screen on the original Last.fm application (left) offered a confusing mush of buttons, hidden volume control, and obstructed album art. Last.fm 2.0 (right) offers a much cleaner interface with consolidated controls, pristine artwork, and dedicated volume slider.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Last.fm's streaming audio performance has also improved on their application. The dropouts and buffering delays experienced in the first version of the Last.fm application have all but disappeared in version 2.0. While connected over a moderately strong Wi-Fi signal, we encountered no drop outs and noticed that the buffer gaps between songs are down to around 1-2 seconds in length (about what you'd experience using Pandora). Audio quality is also quite good, with no noticeable streaming compression artifacts and a stereo sound quality comparable to 128Kbps MP3.
Overall, the updates to the Last.fm application have brought nothing but improvements. If you're looking for a personalized streaming music application for your iPhone or iPod Touch that offers more features than Pandora, Last.fm does not disappoint.
Editors' note: Last.fm is owned by CNET's parent company, CBS Interactive.
Donald and Jasmine discuss the third-generation Zunes and Slacker's new personal radio player, the G2. Plus, find out just how useful the iPod Nano's new text-to-speech function is.
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Donald Bell is an electronic musician, a veteran record store employee, and a fearless hardware hacker. He's also CNET's Senior Editor for MP3 and digital audio.
Jasmine France is CNET's resident digital audio doyenne, writing and editing product reviews, crave blogs, and feature stories on all things MP3. And if you need advice on headphones, she's your girl.
