doubleTwist AirPlay Recorder and iTunes Radio

AirPlay Recorder

I mostly ignored doubleTwist’s announcement of AirPlay Recorder for Mac two weeks ago, but yesterday I realized that I needed the app to save a couple of tracks from iTunes Radio, and it worked exactly as advertised.

AirPlay Recorder, as the name suggests, can record AirPlay streams on a Mac and it’s primarily optimized for iTunes Radio. Once downloaded and launched, AirPlay Recorder will trick OS X into thinking the app is an external speaker, so you’ll see a “dT Recorder” option in iTunes’ AirPlay menu.

AirPlay Recorder

Select the “fake” speaker, and iTunes will start sending audio to the AirPlay Recorder app. Unless you choose the “Multiple” tab from the AirPlay menu and decide to stream audio both to your computer and AirPlay Recorder, audio will be muted because AirPlay Recorder will be the only active speaker. AirPlay Recorder has no settings or other options to configure – it just sits in the Dock, waiting for AirPlay streams to turn into MP4 files.

I am an iTunes Match subscriber, and I use iTunes Radio quite a bit; I’m especially a fan of the “First Play” previews, which allow me to listen to new albums before their official release date. Yesterday, my girlfriend and I were listening to Pharrell Williams and Rick Ross’ new albums on iTunes Radio, and she asked me if I could save a few tracks offline to listen to them at any time before they’d become available on Rdio (she’s a subscriber).

AirPlay Recorder

Once connected to iTunes, AirPlay Recorder can recognize individual songs from Radio streams and display artwork alongside song duration and track information. As iTunes streams Radio tracks and AirPlay Recorder grabs them, tracks will be saved in a “Recorder” folder under your local Music folder; tracks are saved with artwork, album and artist metadata, but, unfortunately, AirPlay Recorder doesn’t create sub-folders for albums and it doesn’t support track numbers – all songs will be in the same folder and out of order, which can be annoying.

There are couple of nice touches that I appreciated. When the app recognizes shorter tracks (such as skits or First Play commercial breaks between songs) it automatically skips them because it assumes you don’t want to listen to them again. Similarly, if you listen to an iTunes Radio station you’ve already recorded, previously saved tracks will be skipped without saving.

doubleTwist AirPlay Recorder is an audio recorder that works well with iTunes Radio and AirPlay; while more advanced apps are available to Mac users (such as Rogue Amoeba’s popular Audio Hijack Pro), I needed a simple solution for iTunes Radio, and, aside from minor shortcomings, AirPlay Recorder works for my needs.

AirPlay Recorder is a free download, but you’ll need to purchase a $9.99 license to record and save full streams.