Internet radio- A Brief Introduction

This is a reprint of my earlier blog which appeared under Erik's Musings. I intend to separate this from my music blog and thus have started this as a separate venture. Continue to follow Erik's Musings for more articles about music and follow this blog if you want to follow my ignorance of internet radio. Alternatively, why not follow both blogs?

In my earlier blog I talked a little bit about listening to different types of music and how I personally have found this to be of great enrichment to my philosophical, religious and logical thinking. I realize that this is very difficult to quantify and do not profess to be able to produce concrete results of my investigations. Perhaps at a later stage I will be able to do so. Meanwhile, I would like to follow up my earlier musings with a few thoughts about internet radio.

One of the great advantages of listening to radio online is that you are not limited by broadcasting range limits and other such concerns. I listen to radio stations from Alaska, The Netherlands, Norway, Israel, Australia and India all the time.

There is no doubt that the whole world of internet radio listening is vast and is expanding at a phenomenal rate. I began my internet radio listening experience by using sites like Radiotime and Reciva which have databases and listings of internet radio stations worldwide.

Once I had explored Reciva, Radiotime and a few other similar sites I discovered that itunes, Windows Media Player and Winamp also had their own radio databases, Winamp leaning heavily on utilising Shoutcast and CBS/AOL radio. I also bought a plugin dongle called Aluratek internet radio jukebox which claimed to give me access to 15,000 plus internet radio stations. As I am a rather curious (in both senses of the word) person, this number of stations was not sufficient for me, so I decided to start making my own database of the electic stations which I wanted to make an integral part of my listening experience. After all, I am a musician and normal music becomes boring after a while (I jest, of course).

I then downloaded atunes which is available from Sourceforge.net at the grand price of £0.00. Initially I intended to try this as an alternative music/mp3 player. You are probably aware that each music player is configured differently and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. I therefore tend to use them according to my mood and whim and enjoy the fact that they are not all alike. I compare it to playing one of my piano pieces on ten different pianos, the tone and acoustic will vary considerably.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that on atunes it is possible to add your own radio stations to those already included on the downloaded software. I proceeded to do this and decided to make this the main database for my own personally preferred radio stations. To date this has been quite successful and I am now regularly adding new stations to this growing database. It is also possible to add stations to Winamp and itunes but this is a bit more involved than it is on atunes. I hope to write more about this and look at other related questions and possibilities.

Having dealt with the technical aspects of this subject I would just like to add that I am open to questions and suggestions about internet radio and aspects of listening to music raised in my earlier posting. Please contact me on erikretallick@yahoo.co.uk with any questions or comments. I know others of you may be much more advanced in the knowledge of the world of internet radio but would like to hear from you anyway.