WE live in a world of streaming entertainment. An amazing 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube EVERY MINUTE.

The world’s number one music streaming service, Spotify, has a library of 20 million songs. Incredibly, four million tracks have never even been played.

Across all territories, Netflix has a back catalogue of 15,000 films and TV series.

You don’t have to be a genius to work out that it is mathematically impossible to watch and listen to everything.

The latest version of Audials aims to help users cut through the dross.

The software functions like any other multi-media player – it catalogues your music and films then serves them up via an easy-to-navigate user interface. The built in player can cope with most codecs – including several obscure file types – and you can tweak the sound to your heart’s content.

Audials 2016 has other tricks up its sleeve, however.

The biggest is the ability to record your favourites for replay when you’re cut off from an internet connection.

This feature is invaluable when you’re traveling – and it’s a great way to keep the kids happy on long road trips.

Audials software doesn’t download streaming content because that would be illegal. Instead, it records the stream as it plays on your computer’s screen.

Obviously this results in a drop in quality, but if you have a reasonably modern PC the results are perfectly acceptable for occasional viewing and listening.

The 2016 version comes with handy pre-sets for all the major sites you might like to use it for (with the exception of BBC iPlayer) – recording is usually just a single click away. It can also adapt itself to variable framerates and unusual screen ratios. You can even record your own DVD collection and archive your favourite titles.

Audials 2016 even attempts to tag recorded files, although this feature works better for music than video at the moment, and automatically updates itself.

Obviously recording is very much a grey area – Audials says it is no different to the halcyon days of home taping the Top 40 from BBC Radio 1; streaming service providers take a different view – and we would never condone breaking copyright, but for recording YouTube videos of roller-skating cats or whatever it’s perfect.

My 10-year-old son used Audials to record one of his favourite Minecraft videos from YouTube and was very happy with the file quality when played back on his tablet.

The main user interface is more straightforward than it used to be, but there’s still a lot going on.

Audials 2016 is compatible with Windows 7, 8 and (thanks to a recent update) Windows 10. Download the free demo version to see the quality for yourself and check out how it runs on your PC from audials.com

If you don’t want the full fat version Audials also sells lite versions with music or movie functionality.

For a limited time Audials 2016 is available for £26.50 (normal price £53).