First Look: New Radioshift Is Like TiVo For Radio.

If you like the control you get with TiVo or a digital video recorder (DVR), then you’ll like Rogue Amoeba’s new Radioshift.

Think of it as a TiVo on your Mac that plays and records internet radio stations and programs. Select the radio station you want, click to play or click to subscribe.

This is the kind of Mac application that once you see it and try it, you wonder why there wasn’t something like it already. Radioshift is like TiVo for radio.

I don’t normally jump all over version 1.0 of anything, but Radioshift is an exception. The people at RogueAmoeba have years of experience developing Mac audio applications, including the popular Audio Hijack Pro and Fission, the lossless audio editing tool.

20 minutes after opening up Radioshift I was ready to shell out a little money for something I both want and need.

Time shifting has become the defacto standard in our household for television viewing. If it’s not Elgato’s EyeTV on the Mac, it’s the DVR from the cable company.

I select just the programs I want to watch, set the DVR to record and save each one, then watch from the stack when I want, rather than be forced to adhere to a viewing schedule. Hint to NBC: It’s all about control. You’re losing yours, I’m gaining. I’m willing to pay for that.

Internet radio is a different situation, but Radioshift eliminates most of the problems. Yes, there are about 50,000 internet radio stations scattered around the planet, many of which are available in streaming format within iTunes, Mac or Windows. So what? Again, I’m forced to listen when something is scheduled, rather than record and listen to my schedule.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done method doesn’t work for TV viewing or radio listening.

Radioshift is straightforward. Download, unzip, drag and drop to install, double click to run. The application is simple enough that I have yet to look at the extensive manual. Icons in the left column. Action icons in the bottom row. Action and details in the middle.

Click on the Radio Guide to bring up Radioshift’s home view; a listing of Popular stations and programs, and the Favorites you’ve collected. The top bar has buttons for Home, Explore, Genres, and World radio stations. Clicking Genre, as the example, brings up a list of Music, Sports, or Spoken radio stations on the internet. Each is then divided into sub-categories such as News, Oldies, Science, Baseball or whatever. A search bar is also included.

Clicking on any subcategory brings up the latest stations, which you can click and play, add to favorites (a cumbersome affair), or subscribe to as if they were a Podcast. As my first example, I did a search for Richard Sher’s “Says You”, a wonderful word game radio program that shows up on public radio stations. The audio version is available for about $6, which is pricey, though some NPR stations provide a download.

Radioshift found Says You right away and let me schedule it for recording. I did a search on Rick Dees’ Weekly Top 40 and subscribed to record it and send it to iTunes. Clicking on a subscription radio show opens up tools below the details to edit the audio, send to iTunes, delete, or listen. That’s control.

The interface is simple but cumbersome in places. For example, Add to Favorites, a very handy feature, is buried. First, you have to be listening to what you want to add to Favorites. In the Now Playing display at the top of Radioshift is a small italicized “i” similar to what you see in Dashboard Widgets. Click it and you get detail for the channel, and the option to Add to Favorites. That needs to be in a menu or as an ever present icon.

Radioshift lets you listen to many different audio streams ranging from Windows Media, QuickTime, MP3, and Real Audio. I was surprised at how many Real Audio stations are streaming on the internet. I refuse to install the buggy and problematic Real Audio on my Mac, free or otherwise.

Radio content can be recorded and played back later. Even multiple stations can be recorded at the same time, all in the background while you’re doing something else or not even around. Your Mac can even be set to wake from sleep to record radio programs. Radioshift even works with Griffin’s USB RadioShark to record over-the-air radio.

Gimme’s and Gotchas? A few. I never could get the Explore button to work so whatever it explores I haven’t figured out yet.

The World button is cool. Click it and Radioshift’s center screen pops up a graphic of the world, Google Earth style. Each city with an internet radio station has a green dot. Click on a dot anywhere on the World map, and Radioshift displays all the internet radio stations in that location. The standard OS X “grab” hand moves the map left, right, up, down.

Many of the international stations are not supported by Radioshift, or require Real Media installed on your Mac to stream the radio station. Sometimes Radioshift would show a station was streaming successfully when it was obvious that it wasn’t. No sound means no streaming audio to me, though it may be that the audio stream is being blocked at the source.

Another issue is the warning that Radioshift doesn’t support certain stations. The warning doesn’t come up until you try to listen to a station in the listing guide.

Gotchas aside, the key value with Radioshift is, as the name implies, a time shifting ability for internet radio stations. Select the station or program, add it to the schedule, record it, listen when you’re ready. It’s that way on TV. Now it’s that way for internet radio.

Radioshift isn’t perfect yet, but it’s a very good start at 1.0. I was impressed at the number of internet radio stations in every category, and disappointed at the number that could not be streamed to Radioshift. It’s difficult to say, “50,000 channels and nothing’s on!” with Radioshift.

Download and try it out. You get 20-minutes of good quality audio which then degrades until you restart Radioshift. Do you see a future in time shifting radio and TV? Talk Back to Mac360 in the Comments section below.

Update - a number of alert Mac360 readers pointed out that RadioLover is similar to Radioshift in that both record streaming audio and have a scheduler. Radioshift automates some functions which are manual in Radiolover, which will also record stations in iTunes. RadioLover is also less money for fewer features, but is an attractive alternative.