My buddy Jim Widner posted in a comment a link to a blogpage gushing over the BBC’s experiment in downloadable MP3 files. I thought perhaps I should counter with a few links I found in my bookmarks that I used after building the audio computer as a starting-point to the automated download/storage of the things I routinely listen to (or at least try to listen to, anyway). This is not to get everyone to run out and build a linux machine, only to show that this has been done before.

The Linux Radio Timeshift HOWTO - the granddaddy of all radio-timeshifting documents. Note that the bulk of the page deals with “real-world” radio since that was the “hard part,” and only in passing references the easier storing of RealAudio streams (which shows the page’s age…no mention of WMP or Shoutcast files). The rudimentary scripts on this page were the beginnings of the scripts I use every day to record shows from both the Internet and the “real world.”

Linux based Radio Timeshifting - A considerably newer page, with tons of interesting information…but again, it’s more geared to recording terrestrial radio stations. It also has a script I find a little too unnecessarily complex; unlike Windows, un*x works best when there are tiny programs all tied together to perform a specific function, where the components can be reassembled to do something different.

Time shifting FM radio - Ok, I’ll admit it, it makes me want to buy a computer-based FM radio, like the Hauppauge 350 to replace the 250 I already have. But since I don’t have one, I need to do things a little differently. Bookmarked, though, for the day I get one.

Time Shifting Radio with Linux - Again, requiring a computer-based FM tuner.

The Linux MP3 HOWTO - This HOWTO deals more with working with MP3 files within linux, but it’s important information if you’re planning on using lame to encode/decode MP3 files. Pipes are clearly an advantage here, since you can skip completely the huge intermediate WAV or AIFF files by piping the stream from sox directly to notlame.

There are other pages, but these should get you started if you’re really interested in the topic. There are even a couple pages on the Net discussing doing this with Windows, but for various reasons anything within Windows is doomed to be less feature-filled than in linux.

And if you want to record a Shoutcast stream to disc, all you need to do is point lynx to the stream (I use lynx since you can modify –useragent to spoof as “WinAmp”) redirecting to a disc file (and send error messages to /dev/null since you’ll get one if –useragent doesn’t contain lynx). Grab the id of the lynx process, sleep the appropriate number of seconds, and kill the pid - you can also add a flag to decide if you want to pipe the resultant disc file to XMMS, although I sleep 30-seconds before doing so to add a buffer. Unless there’s a problem with the stream server or the Net (happens sometimes), you should have a neat little MP3 file on your drive containing whatever it is you wanted to hear.