How to Record Internet Radio

Internet radio is real-time audio. That means it never stops, it keeps on going forever, with new tracks being faded in and out all the time. But what if you want to listen back to a radio show or have a copy for future playback on your radio station?

Well it's actually quite easy! We'll cover two ways you can record streaming audio from your radio station in this post.

One thing we must mention before we begin is that you should only record an online radio station that you have the rights for. The approaches we will cover only work for your own station, so we don't need to worry about that. However, it is important to mention as radio stations put in countless hours into honing their craft and perfecting their streams and that needs to be respected.

With that covered, let's get into it.

1. How to record your online radio station's stream with Radio Cult

The first approach we'll cover is how to record your internet radio's stream with Radio Cult. This is the most hands-off method and the easiest. This all assumes you're streaming with Radio Cult, of course!

Radio Cult is built off of scheduling events. If you can use Google Calendar then you can start your own internet radio station.

Every event you schedule in Radio Cult has the ability to be recorded. You simply need to toggle record on (see below picture) and we'll automatically record the event. Every event on your Radio Cult calendar will be marked if it's set to be recorded, making it easy for you to check the right shows are going to be recorded with just a quick look.

Once an event is finished, we upload the recording into our cloud and archive it for later use. You can access all of your recordings in the Recordings section of the Media view (see picture below).

With your recordings you can archive them for regulatory reasons, upload them to Soundcloud & Mixcloud, download them to edit and share or even keep them for future playback on your station's stream.

2. How to record your live shows with BUTT

The second approach is a bit more hands on BUTT (hehe - see what I did there) puts you firmly in control. For this approach, we'll be using the popular live streaming audio tool named as BUTT.

BUTT can be configured to automatically start recording whenever you connect to your Radio Cult stream. It will also stop recording whenever you disconnect. Even better is that you can configure the setup so that the files are automatically named with the current date, allowing for easy access in the future.

To set this up:

1. Open BUTT

2. Click on the "Settings" button to open the settings view

3. Navigate to the "Record" settings tab

4. Configure the automatic naming of your BUTT recordings, the folder they will be saved to and when you want BUTT to stop and start the recording.

There are only two downsides to this approach. The first is that it is only effective when you're streaming on your radio station live. BUTT is what connects and pushes the audio through from your setup off into Radio Cult's cloud. This means, it has no way to listen when you have pre-recorded mixes or curated playlists being automated and played at the right time by our scheduling system.

The second downside is that it can be a bit more difficult to setup than using the inbuilt Radio Cult recording functionality. This is compounded when you have hosts / presenters for your station going live from many different locations. Every one of them will have to configure recording for their instance of BUTT. Compare this to Radio Cult where all you have to do is toggle recording to true on an event.

However, the strength of recording through BUTT is that you have full control over when and where you want to start and stop the recording. This can be important if you have hosts who go start or finish their live show a bit late or early. They can be sure to capture the entirety of their live show.