Streamripper was started sometime back in early 2000. Streamripper started as a way to separate tracks via Shoutcast's title-streaming feature. This has now been expanded into a much more generic feature, where part of the program only tries to "hint" at where one track starts and another ends, thus allowing a mp3 decoding engine to scan for a silent mark, which is used to find an exact track separation.

Streamripper is now part of the FreeBSD standard distribution, mentioned in the Linux MP3 HOWTO, known to compile on many platforms such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, BeOS, OS/2. This is not surprising as portability was a constant consideration during development.

With the emergence of file sharing protocols such as Napster, Gnutella, and now Mojonation and Freenet, the average Internet user can download nearly any mp3 he wants in a matter of no time, but many times people don't know what they want. Streamripper allows you to download an entire station of music. Many of these mp3 radio stations only play certain genres, so you can now download an entire collection of goa/trance music, an entire collection of jazz, punk rock, whatever you want.