How to capture, save, record or download streaming audio for free

Posted on September 11, 2007 at 9:10 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Audio Tutorials series!

How to capture, save, record or download streaming audio for free
How to extract audio from AVI, WMV, MPEG, FLV, MOV video files for free
How to rip an audio cd and convert WMA files to MP3 for free
How to recover the volume or sound icon to your Windows taskbar
How to record cassette tapes to PC/Computer

Ever wonder how you could possibly record or rip a song that’s being streamed across the Internet onto your computer for free? Trying to download streaming audio directly to your computer can be quite difficult because different sites have different security measures put in place, so one program might work for one site, but not another.

However, one surefire way of recording streaming audio from any web site is to simply capture it via the sound card on your computer. Basically, there are programs that can record whatever is being played by your computer’s speakers, so if you can hear it, it can be recorded. Of course, you’ll have to listen to the entire song since the recording is live, but it’s definitely much easier than trying to download the file from the web site directly.

There are two programs that I use to capture and save streaming audio: one installs as a toolbar into Internet Explorer or FireFox and the other one is a standalone program.

If you don’t mind having another toolbar installed in your browser window, FreeCorder is a very convenient program to use if you’re going to be recording music that’s mostly played via the web, such as Internet radio, etc. Also, it has many other features that make it quite useful, such as the ability to extract audio from videos and record from your PC’s microphone or line-in port. It also supports Windows Vista and has absolutely no spyware or adware, so you don’t have to worry about pop-ups, etc. You can save the recordings out as MP3 or as WAV files.

Once you have it installed, click on the Settings button to configure the source for the sounds or music.

By default, the “Record From Freecorder Audio Driver” is selected and this will record anything that is being played through your speakers. If you have a Windows input device, such as a microphone, you can select the second or third option. However, remember to de-select the other options and only have one checkbox checked at a time, otherwise it creates a separate file for each source.

You can also change the output format to WAV, prompt for a filename or automatically timestamp it, and choose the location for the destination files. Now start playing some music on your computer and press the red Record button. A little box will pop up and you should see the green line moving up and down. The nice thing about this program is that you can have your laptop sound on Mute or have your speakers turned off and it will still record whatever is being played.

Click Stop when you’re finished and then click Play to view your recordings. And that’s it! A pretty easy and cool way to record any sound or music off the Internet or from your computer.

If you don’t like the idea of cluttering up your browser toolbar, you can use a standalone program called MP3MyMP3 Recorder, which is also free. Like FreeCorder, this program also records whatever is being played by your computer’s speakers. However, unlike FreeCorder, this program requires that your sound NOT be muted. So if you want to record anything, it has to be playing and you have to be able to hear it yourself.

Also, by default, MP3MyMP3 tries to record from your microphone and not your sound card, so click on the Source button and choose Stereo Mix as the sound source. The recording quality for both of the products was very good and sounded just like the originals from what I could tell. Personally, I like FreeCorder better, but MP3MyMP3 is also a fine alternative.

Any questions or problems, please post a comment!

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33 Responses to “How to capture, save, record or download streaming audio for free”

Stumble Exchange said on : September 17th, 2007 at 8:24 am

Its best to have as few steps as possible when you want to save streaming media. Its funny that this same problem has been around for over 10 years!

Anil said on : October 13th, 2007 at 12:38 am

I downloaded the software and it shows on the toolbar of my internet explorer, but when I press the record button a small pop window opens which says Record but I cannot see any activity going on inside the box, I mean the waves and when u stop and listen nothing is recorded

akishore said on : October 13th, 2007 at 1:09 am

Hi Anil,

You may need to play around with the Freecorder settings as shown above. There are three checkboxes that you can choose, so select each one separately and then try to record again. Also, can you hear the sound through your speakers? Let me know if this solves your problem. Thanks.

Dave Parson said on : October 16th, 2007 at 11:42 pm

This is part of what I wanted. Now, I wonder - ‘if I down load what I want, will I be able to cut out the pieces I want, or just shorten the whole down to the part I want. That’s #1. And #2 is, is there a way of attaching that sound or sounds to a particular photo, document, HTML, or whatever? - so that when you open it it sounds - possibly repeating? Do you have any ideas on all this??

Richard Fdisk said on : October 19th, 2007 at 7:22 pm

.mp3, .swf, .rm/.ra, and wma/wmv’s files can almost always be found in your “Temporary Internet Files” you just have to get there and copy it out before it’s done playing, because in some cases it gets deleted from there when it’s done playing.

the only trick is getting a streamed .rm/.ra onto your machine which is a bit involved

Cheers
◄RfD►

George said on : October 19th, 2007 at 8:34 pm

Mp3MyMp3… The only source option that works for me is ‘What U hear’. I don’t believe it is recording from the sound card…too much static. Any ideas?

Also, I considered uninstalling and downloading the toolbar version. How do I unistall Mp3MYMp3? My OS is XP and I don’t see the program listed in those that can be removed?

Thanks

jocko said on : October 20th, 2007 at 5:01 am

The feature i need is the ability to set the software to record a late night radio show while i am asleep. Does this software have that feature or can you recommend a solution which will allow me to set the computer to begin recording at a set time & then stop?

akishore said on : October 20th, 2007 at 7:57 am

Dave - FreeCorder does not have any editing capabilities. The only thing it does is remove any blank sound from the beginning or end of a recording. As for attaching it to a document, you can really only insert sound into a HTML document. You cannot attach sounds to photos.

George - You can uninstall MP3MyMP3 by going into the C:\Program Files\MP3MyMP3 folder and clicking on uninstall. It also didn’t show up for me in the Add/Remove Control Panel.

Jocko - The software does not have the ability to schedule recordings, though that would be nice. The only way I can think of doing it is to use some kind of mouse and keyboard recording software that you can then set to repeat before the show starts. Check out vista-software.com.

Aseem

Richard FDisk said on : October 21st, 2007 at 2:51 pm

record late @ night “unattended”

“Task Scheduler” maybe?

I haven’t played around with the XP “Task Scheduler”
but the old w98 one would schedule just about anything you wanted, but if the XP one still works the same or almost the same, that might be an option.

Cheers
◄RfD►

PCM said on : November 21st, 2007 at 3:58 pm

Jocko,

Look for the free audio recording program called Audiograbber v.1.83. It will record from your audio card’s stereo mix buss (if you have one) via its “Line In Sampling” feature. It has a time scheduler as well, rips from CDs, saves as MP3 or .wav and has lots of other great features. It works great.

Pat

Mel said on : November 30th, 2007 at 10:10 am

My sound card (SB X-Fi xtreme Audio) apparently does not have a “stereo mix” or “what u hear” function. I thought every sound card has this but apparently not.

I want to record internet radio streams using any of the software recoders available online but they don’t work without the “stereo Mix” sound source.

Anyone know if it possible to record internet radio streams without this functionality?

Is there any software that supplies this Feature?

Navid said on : December 4th, 2007 at 5:20 am

Hi, Thanks I used MP3myMP3 that’s really Cool software, and of course your help is great.

frank said on : December 11th, 2007 at 8:31 pm

mp3mymp3 is great except for the fact that i cannot make the recording volume go above “0″. i grab and slide the recording volume “knob” and, when i release it, it just slides back to “0″… help please!! thank you very much

Noidxbx said on : December 30th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

WavePad works better if you have XP or earlyer

tgrosch said on : January 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

Help, I downloaded the freerecorder, and have been trying to record, it says it’s recording and you can see the pop-up but after about 20 minutes a window pops up and says it is windows is shutting it down?

Is there a time limit to how long you can record, or am I doing somthing wrong?

Thanks for your help

tgrosch said on : January 10th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

Hello again - I got it to finally record a longer time period but when I play it back it has a clicking in the background? Any suggestions or ideas?

Thanks

akishore said on : January 10th, 2008 at 9:29 pm

Hi tgrosch, your problem with the clicking in the background might be because you have sounds enabled for Internet Explorer. You have to go to Control Panel, Sounds and turn off the default sounds for Windows.

vijaya bhaskar said on : January 29th, 2008 at 1:18 am

This is most usefull to me to recording purpose

Randy said on : February 12th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

Downloaded mp3Mymp3… there is no “Stereo Mix” option anywhere in the program. It looks like the window is displaying funny.

Either way, it would NOT record the stream I was listening to.

I’ll try Freecoder next (didn’t want a toolbar, though!).

Andrew said on : March 9th, 2008 at 9:30 am

hey, I recently tried freecorder and in IE7, IE constantly said it has encountered a problem and closed itself D: and FF3 didn’t even let me install it due to no secure stuff or something ;~; I just tried mp3 my mp3 recorder, but the quality isn’t really that good D: can you help me? D:

bobbie said on : March 9th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

When I record using freecorder, I ran into two problems.
1. It doesn’t record the whole song. Actually, just about 35-40 seconds on average.
2. When I choose to record in MP3 format, does it convert the streaming file format to MP3 or does it depend upon the source format? Some of my recordings were in MPEG format.
Cheers,
Bobbie

joshB said on : March 20th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

the main problem im having is that i can’t record outside music with my line in port or my microphone port. i have tried all three different settings but non of them seem to work. there is also no tutorial for recording ouside music.

akishore said on : March 20th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

Josh, what do you mean by outside music? Freecorder is only good for recording any sounds being played on your computer, i.e. streaming audio, etc. It is not to be used for recording sound from an external device, i.e. if you’re trying to connect a CD player to the line-in jack.

If you want to record sound onto your computer from an external device, then you need to use a program like Audacity.

Alek Davis said on : April 2nd, 2008 at 6:54 pm

Great info. I was just looking for a way to download some old NPR podcasts, and this is exactly what I needed.

dozzy said on : April 15th, 2008 at 11:04 am

1st,i tried to install the freecoder in ie8 nd ff but it couldnt get installed…..wat should i do.it has something to do with security.2ndly i successfully installed the mp3mymp3 only to discover that the stereo mix is an unknown location in my computer..i tried uninstalling using both the control panel and C:\Program Files\MP3MyMP3 folder but culdnt find the uninstall option.how do i uninstall it..ps someone should tell me of a software that can capture, save, record or download streaming audio for free with good quality and convienent.
thanks

akishore said on : April 15th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

Hi Dozzy,

The problem may be with IE8 since that is still a beta version. I would suggest trying FreeCorder on IE7 or Firefox 2 since it works in both of those. Also, to uninstall MP3MyMP3, you have to go into C:\Program Files\MP3MyMP3 and there is a file called Uninstall.

Let me know if you get it working.

JohnW said on : April 15th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

I’ve been using StationRipper ( http://www.stationripper.com ) for a while now, to record internet radio.

Works well.

=JW=

ed said on : April 16th, 2008 at 11:00 am

I’ve the same problem as dozzy. There is no uninstall file…

Dani said on : April 25th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

this is going to be very kool because my friend and made up a song

Dani said on : April 25th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

once you make a song you wil be ale to burn it on to a cd

Richard Fdisk said on : April 27th, 2008 at 7:51 pm

Hi Aseem;

I found another web stream recording program it’s called
“SoundTap” and you get it here

http://www.nch.com.au/soundtap/index.html

it’s part of a whole suite of programs but can be downloaded individually.

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