Ok, It’s about time for a useful update: Some good music from the web? You need to find good web radios, first.

Bob "Bob Boilen" Boilen in the picture. He cares about the lyrics too!

I just can’t understand why it can be considered “illegal” though. Damn, i listen to it for free when it’s on the air, but what if i’m at work in that precise moment, but i still care to listen to it somewhen later? It’s not like i’m selling it. I just want to listen to it and i decide not only when and how – this is internet – but where too – as internet is so rare and expensive where i live. This guide, made by some guy called “Dizzie”,  it’s worth to be spread some more, expecially to my friends ;). If you like the music found through this system, support both the program by listening to it, and the musician by buying his stuff.

So, A bunch of you guys probably know what NPR is. National Public Radio, from the States.

NPR’s “All Song Considered” is one of the best music radio programs around, thanks to the marvellous guys that are responsible for it. One of the few podcasts i have subscribed, along with a CBC one and a few others from a bunch of independent radios and friends.

Now, simply check how good their production is:

—–> ALL SONGS CONSIDERED

So, here we are: You love the program, but you live where there’s no connection, or you spend hours in countless traffic jams. Want to rip one of those amazing transmissions and listen to them? Look down below. That’s how you do it. I’ve found the guide in a very well hidden deleted remote forum post in Google’s cache.

DIZZIE SAYS: “National Public Radio (NPR) is a popular radio show syndicator in the US. You can listen to lots of their shows online, but while they now do offer ‘podcasts’ and other downloadable content, many of the programs are only officially available as streaming content, with no link to download the source MP3. Well fuck that, let’s rip their shit.”

——> “You can of course, use a sound-capturing program like SoundTap (or many others) to record all sound coming out of your computer, but this will result in lossier sound quality, so instead let’s rip the original MP3 file (64 Kbps, 44 KHz) that’s streamed in NPR’s flash player.

1. Head on over to the NPR Archives and pick a program to rip. For this example we will be using:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4167689 though the method should work for other shows in much the same way.

2. Now just take the storyId number from the first URL (4167689 in our example),
and insert it after the id= field in this second URL, like so:
http://www.npr.org/templates/xanadu/xplayer.php?id=4167689&t=1 .

3. Paste the second URL into your browser, and you should get an xplayer.xml file.
(The XML file will either open in your browser or you’ll be prompted to save it).
At the top of the XML file should be a <mediaUrl> field that looks something like this:

Code:

<mediaUrl>

/npr/atc/2004/11/20041112_atc_09.mp3?primaryTopic=1039&assignedTopics=1041,1045,1047,1011&orgId=1
</mediaUrl>

4. Aha. Now we know the filepath of the source MP3 that we want to download,
but alas the URL itself isn’t listed in the XML file. But don’t worry, the root URL is just:
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3

5. Now simply append the mediaUrl value to the end of the aforementioned URL
(stripping out all the extraneous bullshit after .mp3).

So your download URL for this show episode should be:
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asclive/2008/01/20080127_asclive_dwatson.mp3 .

And there you have it. You should now be able to download the original MP3s (64 Kbps, 44 KHz) of your
favourite shows to your heart’s content.

The general process is simple: get the storyId from the first URL,
paste it into the second URL, get the location of the MP3 from the XML file that the second URL points to,
and finally append the MP3 location to the third URL. Easy as 1-2-3-4 .”

Last ones i got were The Shins, Leadbelly, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Willie Nelson explaining how he used to go “song plugging” in a great interview, Neko Case, Hayden, and so on. So thanks NPR guys, again, and thanks Dizzie for the guide.

REMEMBER: Support the work of the artists you like, and down with the Majors!

~ by Alessandro on April 3, 2009.