How to get archived radio programming.

October 26, 2007 8:40 AM

Can I buy/subscribe to archived online/web radio?

I have a P.C. with no web connection at work. Is it possible to buy several hours (8-10) of daily programming (music, talk) from a radio station, put it on a memory stick, then take it to work and listen to it the next day. I'd like to buy several hours at a time, not just 1/2 hour and 1 hour shows.

posted by larry_darrell to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I run Underheard.org, which provides archived college/community radio shows (some are 3 and 4 hours long, most are 1-2). All of our stuff is free, you don't need to buy anything.
posted by toxic at 9:04 AM on October 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

At the very least, you should be able to download radio station podcasts (check out kexp) save them to your stick at home, and then open them with a podcast player at work (if you have/can get one).
posted by drezdn at 9:05 AM on October 26, 2007

Check out Audible.com, I know they sell monthly and yearly subscriptions of Opie & Anthony (may not be your thing, though), which is 3-4 hours of talk daily. I also highly recommend the Ron & Fez show (also on XM), contact me here on MeFi if you are interested in either of those.

On Preview: The Audible subscription would require a supported player
posted by shinynewnick at 9:59 AM on October 26, 2007

Might I also suggest Usenet/newsgroups? I'm in the Orlando market and we have a rather popular FM station that's talk radio all day. Someone, somewhere, is archiving all of these shows every day and posting them to usenet. There's a number of other syndicated shows on there like Howard, Bob & Tom, Lex & Terry, and a number of others. (alt.binaries.sounds.radio.misc) Sometimes I'll hit that up if I've missed a show or want to re-listen to a part of one.

You may have access to this through your ISP already, but in my experience it's a bit shaky (I have RoadRunner), some pieces may get left out and retention of posts is very short - as in less than 24 hours. For $10 a month you can sign up with a newsgroup service and simplify things tremendously. Plus you'd have access to everything else out there on the newsgroups (music, etc). I'm a member of Easynews.com, and one of the convenient things is that through their web interface, all the hundreds of 'messages' that make up a binary are joined together for you so to listen to something is as simple as clicking a link to the mp3 file. (Whereas with a newsgroup reader you have to download hundreds of 'messages' containing binary data which get combined into a single file (ie, mp3) which you can then listen to. ) On Easynews, I can stream it right through my browser. (And their retention is almost 60 days).
posted by MarkLark at 12:27 PM on October 26, 2007