Hey, folks. You knows those sweet live tracks that I have been posting lately? The ones from the RETURN TO THIRD MOVEMENT TOUR? They've been broadcasting a bunch of those. If we can collect all of them, we will probably have enough tracks to compile a pretty sweet live album.

The problem is, so far, I have been going at it all by myself. I need help.
So, I am making this guide to show you exactly how I get those recordings. Location doesn't matter at all. Even when I was living in America, I was recording Japanese radio programs this way. Even now that I'm in Japan, I have to use the exact same method unless it's a local Tokyo area station.

[b]What you will need:[/b]
-Proxy or VPN
-Browser or program for listening to the station
-Recording software (Audition, Audacity, etc.)

Here's the radio schedule:
http://pillows.jp/p/skd/radio

These stations span all across Japan and you'll need to use a proxy depending on where the station is. For this, I use "SoftEther VPN Client Manager".
https://www.softether.org/
(It's free; client with VPN server list plugin here: http://www.vpngate.net/en/download.aspx)
You can browse the addresses via country, and sometimes the IP addresses will tell where they're based.

Once you successfully connect to a proxy in the required area, go to the radio station's website and look for the "listen with Radiko" link, or "tune in", etc., whatever. Here's FM802 as an example:
https://funky802.com/
This site has the big ol' green button at the top right of the page. Click this to listen.
This station is based in Osaka, so if your proxy isn't in the area, you'll get a message about that and a suggestion to become a premium member. If you're connected to a proxy that can access Osaka area, there will be a blue play button. Click it, and the station will play.

Once the station is playing, you can safely disconnect the proxy and use your own connection. However, if you reload the listening page and you're not connected to the proxy, you'll get the area error again. DON'T RELOAD THE PAGE. If the audio stops, usually just pausing and un-pausing the audio will fix it.

Now that you are able to hear the radio, the next step is recording it.

For this, I personally use Adobe Audition. If you don't have Audition, something like Audacity will work also.
Make sure that the "stereo mix" of your PC is able to record, and just hit the record button. This will record any sound that comes through your stereo mix, so I recommend either closing or muting Facebook, messenger, etc., so that there are no annoying "ping" noises in your recording.
Make sure that your volume is at a good level, so that you'll get a nice sounding recording. Since I use Audition, I make sure that the levels max out at just around 0Db. Exceeding 0dB will result in distorted sounding audio
We usually don't know when the particular song that we're waiting for will play. It's often a 2 hour long show, and it can play at any time. I usually just leave Audition recording the entire time.

Another method of recording requires downloading the program "Radikool".
https://www.radikool.com/download
This is a Japanese program for recording Radiko stations. You'll probably have trouble if you can't read a bit of Japanese.
Once you have your proxy loaded up and connected, you have to refresh the Radikool station list. If your station comes up, you can schedule a recording.
This method is more difficult because you have to be connected to the proxy the entire time, and if you get disconnected, it will stop your recording.
I usually only use this method if I'm gonna be away from my laptop all day or if it's a Tokyo based station (so I don't need to mess with proxies). However, I highly recommend being in front of your computer the entire time if you're using this method with a proxy. The failure rate is pretty high from my experience.
I mostly use this program just for refreshing the radio list to test proxies.

[size=150][b]***[/b][/size]I especially need help [b]tomorrow[/b]. I'm sorry for such short notice.
Tomorrow (the 27th), there will be a total of 4 radio programs. There will be one from Hokkaido, two from Kyushu (Kumamoto and Fukuoka), and one from Osaka.

Tomorrow's schedule is:
8:30〜11:00 (the pillows appear around 10:00) - [url=https://www.air-g.co.jp/bd/]AIR-G「brilliant days」[/url] (Hokkaido / Sawao comment and audio from 11.26（日）札幌 PENNY LANE 24)
16:00〜18:55 - [url=http://fmk.fm/rb/]FMK（熊本）「FMK RADIO BUSTERS」[/url] (Kumamoto / audio from 11.19（日）福岡 BEAT STATION)
16:30〜20:25 - [url=http://fmfukuoka.co.jp/gow/]FM FUKUOKA「Hyper Night Program GOW!!」[/url] (Fukuoka / audio from 11.19（日）福岡 BEAT STATION)
24:00〜27:00 - [url=https://funky802.com/poppin/]FM802「Poppin’ FLAG!!!」[/url] (Osaka / audio from 12.03（日）大阪 BIGCAT)

Since tomorrow will be a busy day for me, I'm not sure if I will be able to record [b]any[/b] of them. There's a chance that some stations will air a performance that has already been played. For example, the Swanky Street performance that I posted on the fanpage was broadcast again on another station. So, from the above schedule, we know that we're guaranteed new audio from the BEAT STATION live. One of the Kyushu shows should take the top priority. Any Kyushu proxy (Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Oita, etc. not sure about Okinawa) should probably be able to pick up both stations.
Ideally, we should get recordings from all 4 programs to assure that we don't miss anything.

Anyway, I appreciate any effort. Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to help out.

For context, unless I messed this up, that's:

TODAY, 12/16 (from the west coast's perspective lol)
12:30 pm EST/3:30 pm PST
2 am EST/11 pm PST
2:30 am EST/11:30 pm PST

TOMORROW, 12/27
10 am EST/7 am PST

I should be able to try for the 3:30 pm show today and the 7 am tomorrow morning, but not sure if any westerners will be able to do much for those two middle shows at night.

Like Mafu said, having more people help try would be ideal in case of connwection issues and such. Let's get them darn live tracks!

I'd love to help with this, but those times are little too late for me. I'll see what I can do, but with a 1 1/2 year old still getting up at 5AM almost everyday, I can't promise I'll get up at 2:00 AM to record this and make sure it's streaming properly.

Yeah I'm definitely aiming for the low-hanging fruit, here. :x

I haven't been able to get a list of servers to show up with the SoftEther client, but I successfully loaded a list after instead installing the client plus "VPNGate Client Plugin," which is also made by the University of Tsukuba (child project of the SoftEther project).

http://www.vpngate.net/en/download.aspx

Will try to see if I can't get connected to a good proxy for this upcoming show, fingers crossed lol.

Edit: not finding any Hokkdaido servers to connect to thus far.
Edit 2: Found a Hokkaido server with Mafu's help, but I can't find it in my client to connect to and am not sorting out how to manually add it...
vpn847049904.opengw.net
60.78.255.202
(softbank060078255202.bbtec.net)

Oops. Sorry if I forgot to include the VPN server list in the guide. It's been years since I've set this stuff up and I thought that it was included with the SoftEther VPN Client Manager software.

Anyway, I currently have the Hokkaido station playing in my browser and I have a Kumamoto proxy loaded up for a scheduled recording in Radikool. It looks like Kyushu proxies only cover one prefecture, so this proxy can only access Kumamoto stations. I can't take a stab at the Fukuoka program, if this is the case.
I might only try to record the Kumamoto program, because I have to leave Audition opened to record the Hokkaido one, and I've been having a lot of trouble with my laptop lately. Just about one and a half hours until the pillows come on the Hokkaido program.
God speed, fokes.

[quote="Mafu"]Oops. Sorry if I forgot to include the VPN server list in the guide. It's been years since I've set this stuff up and I thought that it was included with the SoftEther VPN Client Manager software.

Anyway, I currently have the Hokkaido station playing in my browser and I have a Kumamoto proxy loaded up for a scheduled recording in Radikool. It looks like Kyushu proxies only cover one prefecture, so this proxy can only access Kumamoto stations. I can't take a stab at the Fukuoka program, if this is the case.
I might only try to record the Kumamoto program, because I have to leave Audition opened to record the Hokkaido one, and I've been having a lot of trouble with my laptop lately. Just about one and a half hours until the pillows come on the Hokkaido program.
God speed, fokes.[/quote]

The Hokkaido one is 7PM PST yes?

The Air-G Hokkaido broadcast is going on right now, from 3:30 pm PST until 6 pm PST. pillows should come on near 5 pm PST, so we still have an hour for those of us in the states to try and sort it out/help record the broadcast on this one.

I have the VPN Gate plugin for the SoftEther client, and can see many of the servers listed on the VPN Gate page, but can't find the Hokkaido server in my client's VPN Gate server list.

I can do Hokkaido.

Also, SOME of these shows have a "time free" recording that is available for like 24 hours or a couple days after they first air. I missed one last night (it wasn't listed on the pillows' schedule), but I'm recording it now since it's "time free". So, all hope may not be lost if we can't catch them live.

Thanks for the help, fellas.

I haven't listened to the radio in 10 years.

I have the Hokkaido station up and it's not bad, interesting mix of music. 90's Japanese Power Pop to American Hip Hop.

Cool stuff! I'm on vacation right now and will pester my wife to agree to me staying up to try and record and then sneaking into bed later. She has work tomorrow and hopefully will agree that this is important enough? hurr hurr

Pillows are on now.

[i]edit: think it's over. will upload soon.[/i]

Okay, here's the Hokkaido broadcast. Sawao's comments are at about ~5m in. The songs are Little Busters, Another Morning, One Life, and Please Mr. Lostman.

320K MP3. Concert sound is okay-ish quality. http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/78tw ... 7.rar?dl=0

Yeah, quality sounds alright for soundboard web-broadcast.

Crowd singing the first verse of Another Morning's pretty cool. Nice that we're getting at least a handful of the tracks... well, parts of a handful of the tracks.