Disclaimer: This post does not constitute an endorsement for a particular product.
Because iTunes is pretty much the Mark of the Beast, virtually everyone has it. Yas, Yas, it holds all of your CDs and MP3s and you can download podcasts, but it is also the source of infinite music in all tastes and genres via its radio function.
I love iTunes Radio. For an old sod like myself, staying current with all the new music and new bands, spawning it seems, ex nihilo every hour on the hour (and showing up on Rock NYC with their umbilical cords still attached) is all a bit too much. I just can’t keep up.
What I do like is Ambient. Atmospheric, ethereal, lost-in-space, *cough*Eno*cough* style ambient. The greater the parsec quotient, the better.
I’m a web design gadfly and I spend a lot of time using wonky web stuff like Dreamweaver and CSS and Fireworks and cheesy animated GIFs. I’ve found there’s nothing better than barely audible electronic space sounds wafting in the background, to focus the concentration.
There are plenty of online music stations, but iTunes Radio offers so many in one place that I simply don’t bother surfing for them. Drone Zone from Soma FM is my ambient drug of choice. It’s essentially sonic window dressing that streams 24/7. I’m soaking in it right now, even as I write. That’s why this post so strongly reminds you of the poetry of Leonard Nimoy…
I have an office to myself at work and I really craved some ambient, aural wallpaper for my daily toiling. The problem is, it’s not easy to capture and save streaming audio from ITR. Sure, I could buy it, but…why? If it wasn’t free, it wouldn’t be on the internet, would it?
After some checking around, I found the perfect solution: Internet Music Capture from E-Soft
The program allows you to easily download streaming audio to your hard drive in MP3, WMA or WAV format.
Erm…that’s it.
Pick the station playing the music genre of your choice (even that grotty rap stuff) and click the button. The program separates and titles the tracks, and stores them on your hard drive in the folder of your choice. It even skips the ads! I’ve had the app running for about three hours now, and I’ve got nearly 200MB of “final frontier fodder” ready for transfer to CD or MP3 player. My pulse rate is dropping just thinking about it.
ownload the trial for free. Try it out and make sure it works on your computer. The full version, which you’ll really want to get, is $16.