Productivity Sauce

Nothing boosts my productivity more than good music. That's why I always keep Last.fm radio running when I'm working. Or rather, used to keep it running: Last.fm has announced that the company starts charging international users for streaming music. It's not a big deal, except that the service will remain free in the US, UK, and Germany. For me it's as insulting as Windows-only applications. It's not the end of the world, though: as always, the VLC comes to the rescue.

This excellent media player provides native support for Internet radio streaming and it comes with a huge selection of radio stations for every taste. To start the radio stream, launch VLC, and choose Playlist -> Additional Sources > Shoutcast radio listings. Choose then Playlist -> Show Playlist, switch to the Shoutcast Radio. Double-click on the music genre you like to view a list of available radio stations. You can also use the Search field to locate the station or genre you want. Double-click on the desired radio station and enjoy the music. VLC even supports scrobbling, so you can still get recommendations and use other Last.fm services which remain free of charge. To enable scrobbling, choose Tools -> Preferences -> Audio, tick the Enable last.fm submission check box, specify your Last.fm credentials, and press Save. You can also save your favorite radio stations as a playlist. To do this, drag the stations you want to the Playlist folder, then choose Save Playlist to File.

Although VLC doesn't allow you to skip tracks, it allows you to record the stream. To start recording, right-click on the desired radio station in the Shoutcast Radio section and select Save. Configure the streaming settings and hit the Save button. That's it! Bye-bye Last.fm, hello VLC!

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