One of the most powerful and important aspects of the internet is its ability to remove boundaries. Geography and culture, often limiters in real life, can become much less burdensome online. This phenomenon is particularly evident when it comes to Internet radio.
One of the most significant shortcomings of standard AM and FM radio is the geographic restrictions. Great radio stations I listened to in one city are nowhere to be found once I moved. Likewise, depending on your location, there can be a paucity of radio stations playing what you want to listen to.
Enter Internet radio. Transmitted anywhere, good to go at any time, as long as your connection has sufficient bandwidth, you can tune in to one of literally hundreds of options. And one of the leaders in internet radio is AccuRadio.
AccuRadio is free Internet radio, sponsored via ads (both on the site and in the radio stream) as well as sales via Amazon.com items that are linked from the site and while listening. There are close to 300 different stations, with a multitude of styles to choose from including Rock, Pop, Jazz, Classical, International and different decades. Each category has subcategories allowing the listener to further fine tune what they are listening to.
Offering even more customization, in each station the listener can select certain artists to not be played at all. The music is delivered via a pop-up window in IE. Firefox users are out of luck at the moment, that is if you keep your browser up to date. There is a plug-in that works for 1.0 versions of the browser, but I was unable to get it to work using the most recent 1.5 version. This is a known issue and will hopefully be remedied soon.
Likewise, I could not get the stream to play using Opera 8.53, though I have not attempted with the 9 betas. There is no documentation of efforts to get AccuRadio to play in Opera browsers at this time, which is an oversight worth mentioning.
Article comments
1 - Guppusmaximus
Nice Article...Though, I would suggest trying WinAmp(www.winamp.com). You can d/l this free program(or buy the pro version)and it will play Cds,Mp3s and internet radio stations from Shoutcast(.pls). The streams are from 128kbps all the way to 320kbps and the formats include everything from Classical to Metal(Prog,Death,etc). It's by far the best program I have used because the stations are non-stop with little to no audio ads and Winamp doesn't display ads at all. Plus they have an Elvis station which my girlfriend loves.
2 - Guppusmaximus
*OOps* One more thing...Winamp also has free internet tv channels and you can download codecs so it can play Flac,Ogg Vorbis and plenty of other files as well.
3 - Progged
Thanks for the info.
Actually, I have been using Winamp for years, and really like the radio feature included. This was one of those reviews that was supposed to be about AccuRadio, so I didn't go into other sites. I would like to do one that looks at all types of internet radio. My current favorite is Pandora. If you haven't used it, check it out. Very customizable and rather intelligent. The more you listen to it, the better it gets at picking tracks you would like.
4 - Guppusmaximus
"And one of the leaders in internet radio is AccuRadio....The stream is delivered at 32 kbps"
These two statements is what prompted me to comment about Winamp.. I didn't mean to hijack your article but when an internet radio station program boasts 32kbps streaming rate, I don't see it as being one of the leaders because IE performs the same task. Anyways, still a nice article and for the people who are new to this technology, I can see how this program would benefit them.... Can't wait to read your review on all the options available.
5 - Guppusmaximus
*oops* I mean't Windows Media Player performs the same task
6 - Christopher Rose
I love Pandora. I listen to it a lot and it never fails to introduce me to great new music. Alienboy's World sounds like this.
7 - Progged
"I didn't mean to hijack your article but when an internet radio station program boasts 32kbps streaming rate, I don't see it as being one of the leaders because IE performs the same task"
No worries at all. I suppose I put the comment about them being one of the leaders because, at least in terms of centralizing many choices, they do a really good job at that. The manner in which they organize the choices they offer is one of the best I have run into.
Thanks again for the comment.
8 - Progged
Chris: I love Pandora as well. It has introduced me to some of me new favorite bands. Excellent stuff.