Getting Your News as MP3s?

GreenKiwi asks: "I've been really interested in finding a news source that has MP3s of their brodcasts. I have an iPod and download the news in text form most mornings to it so that I can find out what's going on. However, I would love to download (preferably automatically) news in the form of an MP3 that I could download to my iPod in the morning so that I could listen to the news on my way to work. The BBC has Real Audio output, but no MP3s that I can find. NPR has them for Real and WMP. I guess I could download and then convert the files. If that's possible. I'd love to hear whether anyone is doing this and how."

Comments

DIY :)

[joebp]

lynx -dump ${URL} | ${YOUR_FAVOURITE_TEXT_TO_SPEECH_PROGRAM} | ${YOUR FAVOURITE_MP3_ENCODER} > outfile.mp3

You'll probably need to tweak the voice the TTS program produces to avoid involuntarily wetting yourself laughing when it makes hilarious speak-o's.

Also, you'll need to find a decent news site with few extraneous words and crap.

Try listening to your local radio station

[duffbeer703]

Most AM stations have news every half hour.

Re:Try listening to your local radio station

[bje2]

well, the author didn't specify, where he works, or how he commutes, which is a problem when answering this question...obviously your answer is easy, if a radio is readily available...i'm going to assume that the author must not drive to work, because if he did, he could just listen to the news on his radio as you stated, and not bother asking this question...however, i'm guessing he probably lives or works in a major city, where he takes a subway, etc, making a radio/walkman useless (if he's going to the trouble to ask this)...if this *is* actually the case, then the author does need an alternative to the radio...of course, he could just throw a casette tape in his stereo while he's showering/getting ready for work/eating breakfast in the morning...tape a half hour or hour of the news...and then listen to it with a walkman on the way to work...i dunno, it's just hard to answer without having all the pertinent information....

Audible.com does this

[lkk17]

Have you looked at audible.com? They offer downloadable audio books, magazines, and newspapers. You can burn CD's of the downloaded audio. As of a couple weeks ago, they support iPod on Mac (with firmware 1.2), as well as several portable players for Windows.

Unfortunately, they don't support Linux (only Windows and Mac). Their files are not straight mp3's, they are something proprietary with copy protection.

Check it out, this may be what you are looking for!

I do something like this

[Jerky McNaughty]

I have a crontab entry which just records what I want to hear each day. It uses rawrec, sox, and bladeenc to do the job.

Here is an example crontab entry:

0 18 * * 1-5 FILENAME=foo-`date +\%Y\%m\%d`_1 ; cd /archive/radio && /usr/local/bin/rawrec -c 1 -s 32000 -f u8 -t 3600 | sox -b -r 32000 -u -t raw -c 1 - -t wav - 2>/dev/null | /usr/local/bin/bladeenc -128 -quiet STDIN $FILENAME.mp3

Yes, that's a bit of a convoluted command line, but it does the job. I'm sure there's a better way of doing it, but the above has worked for me for quite a while. All you'd have to do is download it to your iPod.

Also, a lot of radio stations and programs have pre-determined times when they cut to commercials. If you're adventurous, you could have those automatically cut out. I've looked into doing it, but never got around to it.

WAMU.ORG...

[jea6]

WAMU, one of DC's "public radio" stations streams in MP3 format. http://www.wamu.org

kcrw.org

[crisco]

I've just discovered KCRW, the NPR affiliate in Los Angeles. They provide a MP3 simulcast stream which includes the NPR news broadcasts. Even better, it is at 128 kbps, to my ears much more listenable than a lower bit rate Real stream.

Unfortunately, they don't archive these shows so you'd have to use something appropriate to save the stream.

A further consideration is the timezone. If you're on the west coast you might be better off ripping an east coast stream overnight, that way your entire morning news program is ready to upload by 6 am, some scheduled recordings could grab the hourly news bites to keep you on top of late breaking events.