Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Deals
Radio Gaga, music lovers' new best friend
Would you like to simultaneously record multiple Internet radio stations and rapidly increase the size of your iTunes library? Allow me to introduce Radio Gaga. It's essentially Snowtape on steroids, capable of recording dozens of stations simultaneously. Of course, it's great for just listening to Internet radio, but with multi-recording and scheduling features, track separation and tagging, and one-click export to iTunes, it's also a handy way to beef up your music collection. With the wealth of radio stations available on the 'net, you're guaranteed to find music you've never heard, but will probably dig.
You can set preferred bitrates and filter the listings (thousands built-in or add your own) based on bitrates or your own ratings. Search by keywords in titles and descriptions and narrow down the very general genre categories to your particular tastes. The built in player works with stations or tracks you've recorded, and has a minimized "Remote Control" view, easily triggered with a Command-2 shortcut. Optional Growl-like notifications keep you up-to-date on what's playing and what's recording.
You can organize your favorite stations and tracks with folders and playlists. When it comes to tracks, I'd much rather build an iTunes playlist, which is a simple matter of highlighting the tracks you want to keep and hitting the "Send to iTunes" button on the track page. You can set a preference to have tracks removed from the Radio Gaga folder and track listings when they've been added to iTunes. I'm unsure, as usual, about the legality of recording 'net radio in this fashion, and what implications it has for the stations themselves. I guess we'll see.
The program is polished and usable right now, but I'd love to see a few things improve: better keyboard navigation and configurable hotkeys, on-the-fly normalization, an option to save only full tracks, and a track/artist display in the mini-view when listening to live radio. Despite my nit-picking, the app is really impressive, and thanks to a special introductory rate at the MacUpdate Promo site, good through July 19th, I picked it up for $19.99US. It will be $39.99 after that, but you've got a few days to take advantage of the intro rate. A free trial is available, check it out.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Rafael said 12:53PM on 7-12-2009
How does this compare to RadioShift?
Radio Gaga is a little bit too common (and possibly to new) to find interesting comparisons via your favorite search engine.
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Brett Terpstra said 12:56PM on 7-12-2009
Ah, good question. I haven't used RadioShift and had actually forgotten about it. If you download the Radio Gaga trial and make a quick comparison, I'd love to hear back.
Rafael Bugajewski said 1:08PM on 7-12-2009
After the first look I do like RadioShift’s interface more and it seems a little bit more Mac-like. Radio Gaga’s interface is also nice, but I’m not a big fan of HUD-interfaces for “normal” applications. I think the metaphor is a little bit over-used.
I don’t know if Radio Gaga records scheduled titles if the application isn’t running. RadioShift has a helper process running in the background that will even wake up your Mac (as far as I remember).
Regarding the supported formats I can’t say anything, because Radio Gaga’s trial version seems to be quite limiting (and frustrating, too). I better like RadioShift’s approach to listen to a stream for about 20-30 minutes and then to hear a constant overlaid noise. However, RadioShift supports AM/FM Radio, MP3 Streams, QuickTime, RealAudio and Windows Media (it offers a simple GUI to install missing plugins).
Both applications look very similar and I don’t see a reason for a user of one application to switch over to its competitor.
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Brett Terpstra said 1:19PM on 7-12-2009
Great info, thanks!
Shawn Starbird said 2:03PM on 7-12-2009
Does anyone know if it is a limitation of the trial that the recordings are broken up into 10 second chunks? Meaning, if I buy the full version, will one song be one track? Right now I have 6 files for the first minute of the first song I recorded. If this is how it is in the pay version, I'll keep looking.
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Greg said 2:41PM on 7-12-2009
There was once a beautiful program called iFill. It recorded streams directly to the iPod Shuffle. Was released by Griffin, and soon discontinued. Glad to see some new life in this space.
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Tony Bowman said 4:10PM on 7-12-2009
i still have my copy of iFill safely archived. bought it on clearance at Target for like $5 a couple of years ago when I was commuting to work, an hour and a half each way.
Don Perreault said 2:57PM on 7-12-2009
Why limit access to stations during demo? Give users at least a week to evaluate every feature so you know what you would get when purchasing a license. Developers that use feature limiting tactic's always make me leery. I fully understand time limits but am against feature limits. I trashed Radio Gaga already and sticking with RadioShift.
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Felipe said 3:35PM on 7-12-2009
No, this is not a limitation of the trial, but a limitation of the radio station you are recording from. Songs are cut according to the tags streamed by the radio. Radio Gaga has a feature that allows you to recombine these pieces into songs: in the Advance menu, Merge Tracks option, will combine all tracks selected under the name of the first track of the selection.
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Kar Ravji said 6:25PM on 7-12-2009
I recorded 6 different stations (mostly indie rock) for 4 hours and ended up liking maybe 5 songs of the 100+ that were recorded. Unless I'm just listening to the wrong stations (in which case, somebody please point me to some decent ones), I wouldn't recommend this program to anyone (like me) who is picky about music.
For now, this is the worst $20 I've spent in the past year.
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cecil said 6:34PM on 7-12-2009
I've used Radioshift since beta for mostly one thing - recording the talk shows I can't listen completely to during the day. I bought the 5 seat family license. Set it once and leave it. Great, although sometimes things go awry. That said, I'm not crazy about the player interface in RadioShift. Can't make it small footprint or control it from the menu bar or control from the dock. It's always this big open window that's in my way that I drag to hide in a corner of the screen . I want to pause live when the phone rings and pick up where I left off after the call. I want access to it at all times and not go hunting for it through my spaces. I've requested this feature several times from the authors.
Here is Radio Gaga fresh out the door with my needs met at least in part. Features are more like iTunes. Green button makes a nice small player or just hit command-2. Easy view interface is nice. You can also control it from the dock. I've always had trouble figuring Radoshift out. Radioshift might be "Mac-like" but it's not "radio-like" to me.
I'm glad to see this fresh face providing a challenge. Rogue Amomeba has been slow to upgrade Radioshift with new and exciting features. I hope GagaFactory continues to improve on this impressive start.
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Mystic said 7:24PM on 7-12-2009
Do any of these programs work with Slacker Radio or Pandora?
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Brett Terpstra said 8:17PM on 7-12-2009
No, but for Pandora, check out PandoraJam.
ken said 11:27PM on 7-12-2009
It seems it won't work with BBC stations - I guess because BBC uses its own player?
Or is there a way?
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borafina said 2:27AM on 7-13-2009
I'm completely new to this space, but I was wondering if it were available for Canadians and if this is considered pirating music?
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Mindmeld said 9:14AM on 7-13-2009
I have to recommend snowtape instead worked much better in trial mode than radio gaga at least in sweden.
the thing i noticied is that radio gaga can capture more radio stations at a time , something i dont need .
http://www.snowtape.com/
Use this code to get a bit cheaper price if you wanna buy it from snowtapes webpage.
http://www.retailmenot.com/view/snowtape.com
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bug said 9:18AM on 7-13-2009
Radio Gaga payed lots of money to become red and a promo at MacUpdate (oh, have a look at the promo price: $39.99 (exp. 7/19, was: $39.99), lol!).
They now payed lots of money again to get on TUAW.
Okay, it may be a cool app but doesn't it show how these developers want to achieve attention?
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will.ashley said 10:10AM on 7-13-2009
After a few hours of playing around with Radio Gaga, I decided to register the product for the discounted $19.99 - have been listening to a collection of the Electronic and Ambient genre stations ever since - downloading about half of the content. Sending to iTunes works smooth as can be. The application also works well with Rougue Amoeba's Airfoil 3 for sending audio streams directly to AirTunes speakers. I would very much like to see a remote application for iPhone, being able to change stations, or record a track on the fly around the house would improve the product considerably.
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Jaroslav said 12:04PM on 7-13-2009
I prefer Audio Hijack Pro for this, but maybe that's because I already know what streams I want to record, and I don't feel like I need software to seek out my favorite genres for me. I don't know. AHP does a lot, is cheap, and looks way better. I gotta say, the screenshots above look pretty tacky.
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Joeystarr said 11:43AM on 7-13-2009
Great !
Radio Gaga on my Mac and Vegas radio (vegasradioapp.com) for my iPhone are best apps for Music lovers...
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