This method is ideal to record long period of time from a radio station (e.g. talk radio). There are many ways to do this but this uses free tools.

These are very “quick and dirty” instructions that assume basic computer knowledge.

1. Download VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
2. Find a radio station that broadcasts in mp3 audio stream. This is the hardest part. Many radio stations do not but a few still do. The url sometimes ends with a “m3u” or “pls” extension. Like this:
   http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kmfa/ppr/index.shtml

   Copy and paste youre radio stream into VLC by opening Media->Open Network Stream->copy in the url. If it starts playing, go to Tools->codec information in VLC and make sure it says “mpeg” audio or something similar. In any event if VLC plays it shoudl work. If the url ends with “m3u” or “pls” right click on the link, download the file and open it in note pad and get the real link. For example, in the example above the real link to the stream is: http://pubint.ic.llnwd.net/stream/pubint_kmfa

3. Open up a text editor and paste in the following making the appropriate changes for your radio stream (using the above as an example):

   "c:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" "http://pubint.ic.llnwd.net/stream/pubint_kmfa" -I dummy --dummy-quiet --sout "#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=raw,dst=c:\audio\KMFA-895-radioe%date:~10%%date:~4,2%%date:~7,2%%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%-%time:~6,2%.mp3}" --stop-time 3600 vlc://quit
   
   

   The stop time is the number of seconds to record. Here it is set for one hour (60 x 60). The c:\audio line is the path to your output file with some extra batch variables thrown in to automatically add date and time of recording.

4. Save the text file something descriptive like “Record KMFA Radio Station.bat”.
5. Open up the Task Scheduler in Windows and Create a new task to run the batch file at the time your program starts.

   I won’t go into details on this but here’s link that gives general instructions:

Also, some written instructions on using the task manager from LifeHacker.

That’s it!