02 May 2010

Recording From Online Radio Service Pandora (or any other)

Using this method, it records every sounds going to your sound card, so you might want to disconnect any microphone (or turn them off) and stop using any program that generate sounds while you are recording.

  1. Download and install Audacity and Lame for Audacity (lame is only required if you want to save the songs as MP3 files)
  2. Start Audacity and click record
  3. Start playing the music at Pandora
  4. Try to record long enough to have complete songs, you can record as many songs as you like in the same file (as HD space allows), you can split them later
  5. Push Stop in Audacity at anytime
  6. To split the recording in multiple songs, follow these directions (if you want to keep it as-is, just choose File – Export):
    1. Click to place the cursor at the start of the first song.
    2. Choose “Add Label at Selection” from the Project menu. If you wish, you can type the name of the song.
    3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each song.
    4. When you are finished, choose “Export Multiple” from the File menu. When you click the “Export” button, Audacity will save each song as a separate file, using the format and location you choose.(if you choose MP3 output, it will ask you for Lame’s DLL which is located in “c:\Program Files\Lame for Audacity” if you use Windows)
  7. Done!

Note: it might not be the easiest way right now to rip music from online radio, but it is the one that is the most likely to still work tomorrow.