Monday, August 20, 2007

Edge's "Ongoing History of New Music" in Your Pocket





















If you're from Toronto, you know 102.1 the Edge as a famous local radio station dedicated to new music.

You'll also know that the station manager has a weekly show called The Ongoing History of New Music. A great show, but at almost an hour long, you usually can't listen to it in one sitting. They offer a stream off of their website (above) and a random podcast, but no real way download the shows you want to listen to to your mp3 player.

Or is there?

Well Stream Crossers, I, Soundwave, have cracked the code! Their internet site actually streams mp3's, which means that somewhere out there in www-land is a pile of Edge radio shows, just waiting to be listened to. But how?

1) Go to
The Ongoing History of New Music and find the show you want to hear.

2) Click on it and a new window will open and the show will soon start playing. Right click on the page, and click on "Show Source". If you didn't get that option, you clicked on a flash portion, try again somewhere else.

3) A window with the source code will pop up. Somewhere on the site you will see a code like this: OHNM0559_01

4) That code represents the episode and segment (ie show0559, segment 1). Every episode has 4 segments.

5) Now in your browser, type in http://bstreamcorus.streamtheworld.com/OHNM/OHNM0546_01.mp3 (replace the code with that of the episode you want). Hit enter and save the segment to disk.

6) Now do this three more times, changing the _01 to _02,_03, and _04. Repeat with each episode you want.

Update (2008-11-18): If you are following steps 5 & 6 and Quicktime is playing the mp3 in the browser and won't let you download the file, here are some options:

1) Disable Quicktime from playing mp3's. If you are using Firefox 3, go to Tools > Options, then click on Applications. Here you can specify what happens with particular file types. Look for mp3 under content type and change the Action to Save or Always ask. If part of the Content Type is hidden because the column is too narrow, just hover the mouse over it and a small pop up will appear with the full text.

This option can be reversed afterwards.

2) Install the "Down them all" extension. Then after restarting Firefox, go to Tools > Manager. Then click on Add URL's and paste the mp3 link into the pop-up box. Don't forget to add the target folder as well.

The extension can also be uninstalled when you are finished if you want.

3) If the above doesn't work, open Quicktime, then go to Edit > Preferences > Quicktime Preferences. Go to the Browser tab, and uncheck "Play movies automatically". This works in Firefox and IE.

4) Also, you can stop Quicktime from loading in the background at boot time (in Windows) by going to Start > Run. Then type msconfig and click OK. The System Configuration Utility will pop up. Go to the Startup tab and uncheck the entry for QTTask. Then click OK. You may need to reboot for this to work.

If you have Firefox, you can use DownThemAll, and the Make Numbered List bookmarklet to download them all at the same time.

1) Install DownThemAll and set up the "Make Numbered List" bookmarklet.

2) Now follow the steps above up to and including step 5. Don't save the file, cancel the save prompt.

3) Now click on the
"Make Numbered List" bookmarklet. This will bring up a new page. Set the 01 to cycle from 1 to 4 (check the Pad with Zeros checkbox). This will generate a series of unique links for each segment. You can even cycle the show number if you wish so it will generate a series of shows with all four segments linked.

4) Use DownThemAll to download all the files at once without having to click and save each one individually.

Enjoying history was never so entertaining!

Until next time, keep listening and keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

the History segments are great, i can't wait to DOWN THEM ALL!!!

EC said...

Holy crap, that sounds too easy to be true. I never have any luck with the firefox attachments, but this is too good to pass up! EXCELLENT POST!

Anonymous said...

Okay, so this is super cool. As I live in NYC, I have never heard the show before, but am listening to it right now. Great stuff.

But, the reason I surfed over to your site, was because I was looking for the origin of the term "don't cross the streams". Now the Urban Dictionary claims that the origin was from the Ghostbusters movie, which was the first time I heard it as well. The amateur produced Urban Dictionary claims the "shared urinal" concept followed.

But, I distinctly remember as a freshman in the fall of 1984, sharing a urinal at a lame-ass frat party (I know... don't ask) and the other guy saying "don't cross the streams". Now this would be, what, 3 months since Ghostbusters came out? Which really came first, the term or the movie?

I've been plagued with this question for 23 years.

Anonymous said...

way cool..

good tip! works, works, works.

Soundwave said...

To Mr. Anonymous #1:

I too have heard the urinal concept of "don't cross the streams". It may very well be that this is the true origin of the line, and it was then popularized in the movie "Ghostbusters". Considering it was written by comedians, they probably thought the line would be funny when applied to nuclear physics.

This site, however is named in homage to Ivan Reitman's ghost catching masterpiece, not some frat-party urinal rule.

Thank you and keep visiting.

To Mr. Anonymous #2:

I'm glad it works, please come back often!

Anonymous said...

This is really great. I downloaded a few episodes a couple of days ago. BUT I went back to download some more yesterday and it doesn't work anymore. When you enter the link and hit enter, now it just leads to a dead end and nothing happens. Did your server crash or did someone shut you down? I hope not, this is such a great show and this is the only place I have found where I could download it.

Anonymous said...

FWIW, they seem to be constantly changing what's on the server. I wanted them all, so the following string will queue up 2400 parts under "add url" in the DownloadThemAll download manager.
http://bstreamcorus.streamtheworld.com/OHNM/OHNM0[000-599]_0[1-4].mp3
Of course, out of those 2400 parts, only about half will download, the rest coming up with 404 errors. It's kinda a messy kludge, but it digs up every episode available on the server.
You also better have several gig of free space. ;-)

Anonymous said...

OK, the url is
http://bstreamcorus.streamtheworld.com/OHNM
/OHNM0[000-599]_0[1-4].mp3

Anonymous said...

Thank you SO much. I've waited forever to be able to listen to these on my mp3 player. (to finally have access to the archives too is astonishing). Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Does this still work? I'm seeing nothing but 404 errors in DownloadThemAll.

Anonymous said...

nevermind... they don't start until #257 :O) Thanks!

Anonymous said...

i tried and it won't let me because i don't have quicktime pro!?!? help!

Anonymous said...

From the little I've read, such as by posts online by Alan Cross himself, the streaming of The Ongoing History of New Music has ended, due to music licensing issues.

Certainly the web locations mentioned no longer work. Corus Entertainment does stream those short 1 minute or so Alan Cross segments at exploremusic.com. And one can find where they are streamed from, but the naming isn't as simple as it was. (eg, http://corusexploremusic.media.streamtheworld.com/audio/0170_ohnm_band_100477291.mp3)
But who wants to save those tiny shows; it is the full length ones that are in demand.

Wish more of them were out there on torrents. Someone must have a nice bunch downloaded when those links were active in 2007...

rainbowcasoup said...

Doesn't exist anymore, dude.

hallo_world said...

Did anyone manage to download shows from the early 90s? Some or perhaps most shows from 98-present are available on torrents but I haven't found pre-98 shows *anywhere*.