web radio

[Brian Kelsay]

[Long post]
Somebody asked about web radio a few days ago.  I got around to more than the stock answer this morning and these look hopeful.

http://www.radio-locator.com/
http://www.web-radio.fm/
http://www.virtualtuner.com/
http://www.radiotower.com/
http://www.webradiolist.com/
http://www.vtuner.com/

I still stick by my answer of going to Shoutcast first for free streams, but the above links could take you directly to the web sites of land-based radio stations that also happen to stream.  Some stations stream with better quality than others.

On a side note, when I listen to talk radio during the day (980 am), sometimes I can't stand the AM hum so I listen on the web.  Because of where I work and the proxy server they use, I can only listen to stations that stream on port 80.   Oddly enough, I get Rush Limbaugh by going to 640am in Atlanta.  This leads to some strange commercials and traffic reports.  http://www.wgst.com/stream.html   Some of these stations require you to subscribe with a username or email address and create a password.  710am in KC is one of those and I have to go to the site with IE or it doesn't work, due to some java scripting that is browser specific.

I can only imagine that they do the user/passwd dance so that the marketing dept. knows who is listening online for demographics.  It's still ad supported you know.

Sort of off-topic:  If you have a big collection of MP3 files like I do, you can set up a web server, get some form of domain name or use your IP, load Shoutcast server, icecast, or Apple's Darwin server to broadcast yourself.  If it is just for you, then you don't want to publish it to the Shoutcast listings, but you could.   There is also other software I have looked at for browsing your music collection online and building play lists, streaming, etc.  Andromeda is one, but it is non-free and is one huge bloated PHP script.  More reasonable is Jin-zora and Zina (Zena is not Andromeda).  Those two have all or most of the features of Andromeda, but are broken down into multiple files so you could actually look at them and understand what's going on and they are free OSS projects.  I'd still like to try them out and set up a Shoutcast stream too, just for fun.  It's all just a matter of time and energy.  Soon, little webserver, we'll be together more often.

But that stuff is only if you are dissatisfied by the available music/talk enough that you want to tinker to get exactly what you want.  I just want the choice.

Brian Kelsay