How to Rip NPR MP3s.

BY: DIzzIE [antikopyright 2008]

National Public Radio (NPR) is a popular radio show syndicator in
the US. You can listen to lots of their shows online, but while they
now do offer 'podcasts' and other downloadable content, many of the
programs are only officially available as streaming content, with no
link to download the source MP3. Well fuck that, let's rip their shit.

You can of course, use a sound-capturing program like SoundTap (or
many others) to record all sound coming out of your computer, but
this will result in lossier sound quality, so instead let's rip the
original MP3 file (64 Kbps, 44 KHz) that's streamed in NPR's flash
player.

1. Head on over to the NPR Archives
(http://anonym.to/?http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/rundown_archi
ve_hub.php) and pick a program to rip. For this example we will be
using http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4167689 ,
though the method should work for other shows in much the same way.

2. Now just take the storyId number from the first URL (4167689 in
our example), and insert it after the id= field in this second URL,
like so:
http://www.npr.org/templates/xanadu/xplayer.php?id=4167689&t=1 .

3. Paste the second URL into your browser, and you should get an
xplayer.xml file. (The XML file will either open in your browser or
you'll be prompted to save it). At the top of the XML file should be
a <mediaUrl> field that looks something like this:


<mediaUrl>
/npr/atc/2004/11/20041112_atc_09.mp3?primaryTopic=1039&assignedTopics
=1041,1045,1047,1011&orgId=1
</mediaUrl>


4. Aha. Now we know the filepath of the source MP3 that we want to
download, but alas the URL itself isn't listed in the XML file. But
don't worry, the root URL is just: http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-
mp3/.

5. Now simply append the mediaUrl value to the end of the
aforementioned URL (stripping out all the extraneous bullshit after
.mp3). So your download URL for this show episode should be:
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-
mp3/npr/atc/2004/11/20041112_atc_09.mp3 .

And there you have it. You should now be able to download the
original MP3s (64 Kbps, 44 KHz) of your favourite shows to your
heart's content. The general process is simple: get the storyId from
the first URL, paste it into the second URL, get the location of the
MP3 from the XML file that the second URL points to, and finally
append the MP3 location to the third URL. Easy as 1-2-3-4 :).

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