I’ve wanted to do this so many time and I know a few other people that have wanted to as well! (I’ll be emailing this to them).

So if you’ve ever wanted to download streaming audio and save it to an MP3 player this is how to go about downling an rm file from BBC and then convert real audio to mp3.

It uses some free software called Audactiy to download any streaming radio from the internet to your hard drive as a WAV or MP3 file. NOTE: Huge disclaimer – Always read the copyright policies of the content provider, make sure you’re not breaching copyright by downloading their streaming audio streams.

1. Download Audacity. It’s free and available for Mac, Linux and PC!
2. Start Audacity and choose View -> Float Mixer Toolbar. In the drop-down menu on Audacity’s mixer toolbar, choose “Wave Out” or “Stereo Mix” as the input source.
3. Open the BBC Radio Player [or any streaming music website], choose the radio station you want to listen (or record) and hit the Play button.

   [The technique work with RealOne player, Windows Media, Quicktime or any other player- Audacity just captures the sound coming from your speakers]

4. As the radio player starts to buffer audio content, switch to Audacity and hit the Record button (it’s in red color). You’ll see a moving waveform indicating that the recording is ON.
5. When the radio show is over or you want to stop the recording, just hit the Stop button inside Audacity. Save the recording as a WAV file or get the Lame MP3 encoder to save the streaming radio as an MP3 file which you can even carry in the iPod or burn it to a CD.

Update: If the streaming file URL uses rtsp:// instead of http://, you can even try using Flashget to download the audio / video file.

The above is the method recommended by Digital Inspiration. However there is another method listed in one of the comments on their site, which apparently is a much quicker solution:

• open the BBC player, right-click on the progress bar on the left and select “View Source” in IE. This will open up a notepad window full of code.
• Use find to search for “RPMS”, and select all the text between quotes in the embed source tag.
• Prefix this with http://www.bbc.co.uk and you have the path to the audio stream.
• Use a download manager (I use NetTransport) to grab the stream. This happens much quicker than the above method which grabs in realtime only.
• When downloaded, use dbpoweramp to convert from .RA to the format of your choice.