StationRipper 2.98.3

If you have a computer, you can do away with things like a regular TV, or DVD player, or telephone, or radio. The computer can easily replace all these things. You can watch TV on your computer, either online or via TV card. You can rip DVDs and watch them on your computer. You can use an instant messaging application to replace your telephone. And you can throw away that old radio because the computer gives you access to a myriad of online radio stations.

While listening to a Shoutcast radio broadcast, you may come to like a song so much that you want to download it onto your computer. This is where a Ratajik Software-developed application that weighs in at less than 2MB comes in. I am of course talking about StationRipper, an application than can easily record Shoutcast radio broadcasts.

StationRipper works by dividing songs from radio streams and saving them onto your hard drive. You can download songs from a myriad of online radios – in this regard StationRipper provides easy access to Shoutcast, Last.fm, Pandora.com, AOL Radio.com, Slacker.com, and a long list of podcasts. There are thousands of stations to go through.

StationRipper comes with built-in iTunes integration. The songs you download can be put in an iTunes playlist automatically. You can take that playlist and sync it to your iPod. Furthermore, StationRipper can also record tracks you listen to on iTunes radio.

StationRipper also provides built-in support for popular social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter. Once a downloading session is complete, you can tweet about what music you just got.

You can rip multiple streams at once, but only if you register the application. You see, you can use StationRipper free of charge, but you will constantly get a nag screen telling you to register. Furthermore, by using the demo version you are not getting all the functionality the application has to offer. Like for example the option to rip multiple streams at the same time.

Pros

• East to use
• The user interface features nice big buttons
• Rip multiple streams at one time
• Automatically create iTunes playlists
• Twitter support
• Provides language support for English, French, German, and Danish
• Auto-skip songs that have already been recorded

Cons

• Demo version is limited: cannot rip from more than two streams, no song filtering, keeps songs under a certain size threshold, cannot restart all the stations you were recording from, cannot copy duplicate songs to output, cannot change the initial URL StationRipper uses for the music list.
• Nag screen

StationRipper has been reviewed by George Norman on 25 Mar 2010. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated StationRipper 4 out of 5 stars, naming it Excellent