Like TiVo for social music sites, Free Music Zilla (Windows only) lets you record streaming music from iJigg, imeem, Last.FM, MOG, MySpace, Pandora, Radio.Blog.Club, and eSnips and save it on your computer or load it onto your portable media player for later playback. We put it through its paces with Pandora to see how the latest version worked.
After installing the program, you need to get it running before pointing your browser (IE or Firefox unless you tweak settings) to one of the supported music sites. As songs play, you see them appear in the Free Music Zilla window (pictured here).
Immediately, it was clear that this is nowhere near as easy to use as TiVo. Tracks don't download automatically; you need to select them individually and then click the download button when the "Leech Timeout" reading gets to zero, but before the download times out. And Free Music Zilla can't tell which song is which, so it's hard to tell which item to select.
Whichever songs you manage to select and download in time appear in theC:/Downloads directory – once again, without anything in the file nameor ID3 tag to indicate what the song is. Since the whole point ofinternet radio is to discover music, this program is likely to saddleusers with a bunch of music they really like, but can't identify.
VCRs are legal, so there's a legal basis for Free Music Zilla and other streamripping programs. In itscurrent carnation, the program shouldn't present Pandora and the others with muchof a problem in terms of keeping their label licensees happy. But if it gets slicker (integration with an acoustic songidentifier would help), you can bet the cease and desist letters willstart flying – assuming they haven't already.
What's a record label to do in a world where people can rip webcasts? One option is to license so many innovative music services(especially wireless/Wi-Fi/WiMAX ones) that music fans begin to seestreamripping and other forms of music downloading as a waste of diskspace.
