I was in your shoes a few years ago. I wish I had VMware then...So my 2 cents is take some time to research virtualization software. You'll be able to things with virtual machines that you can't do with physical servers like deploying new servers from a gold master VM in under 10 minutes or starting a library of VM's for test/dev purposes
Plus you can't beat the price of free software from VMware(Player/VMServer) or Xen if you don't need to run Windows
Streamripper (http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/) is the opensource answer to your problems. Available for Windows, MacOSX, Linux. You can record.mp3's from streaming mp3 web stations. There are hundereds of stations to choose from. Shoutcast is a good start http://www.shoutcast.com/
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Plus you can't beat the price of free software from VMware(Player/VMServer) or Xen if you don't need to run Windows
Streamripper (http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/) is the opensource answer to your problems. Available for Windows, MacOSX, Linux. You can record .mp3's from streaming mp3 web stations. There are hundereds of stations to choose from. Shoutcast is a good start http://www.shoutcast.com/