Questions, concerns, experience with using Net Radio. First off, the players I use for Net Radio are Windows Media and RealOne, which was the upgrade for Real Player. I found local radio the quickest (haven't even found it with Windows Media) with RealOne, although I can't seem to tune in The Burg, which is the CWU station in Ellensburg, and KWCW, which is the Whitman College station in Walla Walla. I also run out of bandwidth realll quick if I run more than just a few net applications. Insights?8 responses total.
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The only net radio I'm listening to these days is Britain's classicfm.com, the nationwide classical music station. Classical music plus commercials. :) It uses Windows Media Player. I just pulled it up; since last I looked at the site they have added a playlist telling you what music is now playing.
The (student) radio station I DJ for has a net stream. May as well be considered a net radio station, since you can only hear it over the airwaves within about a two-hundred foot radius from the antenna. Very very low power. We use a realplayer-format stream. I'm not exactly sure how the encoding process works. it's at http://werw.syr.edu (shameless plug: my show is Saturdays, from 1-3pm EST)
Just found out that one can listen to the various channels of the BBC online. (D'oh.) Of particular interest is a BBC Radio 3 show called Late Junction, which has been getting lots of favorable mention on Folk Roots magazine. The playlists (included on the BBC website) run from British folk through "world music" and on to Western classical. Yum. The show runs 22:15-midnight London time, Monday-Thursday; this should be 5:15-7 pm US eastern time. I'm going to try to pick it up a few times this week. (Andy Kershaw's famous world music show gets the Friday night spot.)
I'm going to start another item for my BBC ravings. I feel like I've died and gone to musical heaven.
I'll tickle this item for some Internet radio tips which aren't purely BBC. A British operation called Mondomix has a number of canned radio shows available for on-demand listening. http://www.mondomix.org/mix_us/radio_us/index.htm Ian Anderson, the editor of fROOTS/Folk Roots magazine, offers a monthly hour of choice selections. He'd previously done a show on the net for the late lamented www.wen.com. Anderson has been my personal music guru since 1985, as I've mentioned before. Charlie Gillett, one of the two key DJs in the spread of interest in world music, has a selection from his weekly BBC London show. Right now I'm listening to the Souad Massi/Brian Eno show from April 2002. Algerian folksinger Souad Massi does two songs at the beginning of the show and then she has to run off for her evening concert; second guest Brian Eno is in the studio to talk and play some of his favorite recordings. I'm getting a 44.1K Real Audio stream on this.
Canned radio rave: The March 2003 show of FRoots Radio, compiled and hosted by Ian A. Anderson, is in endless replay rotation here. The best stuff is front-loaded, with tracks from Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, and two Italian bands called Nuova Agricola Associazione and Luigi Cinque & The Tarantula Hypertext Orchestra. Other stuff: the new albums from Kristi Stassinopoulou of Greece, John McCusker of Scotland, and a fun Turkish band. And a Sami singer who I know from her previous work in Angelin Tytot. This is the best FRoots Radio show I've heard since the series was revived last fall. It streamed for me at 92K, near FM quality, much nicer than the 44K streams I put up with for the BBC. Links to the playlist and the show can be reached at: http://www.frootsmag.com/radio/
Now that I have a reasonably modern music computer which will handle the Flash web junk, I can finally get a good luck at http://www.spydaradio.co.uk, which is linked to by the FRoots web site. Uh oh. Four, maybe six or more, DJs of interest to folk/roots/Americana/world music listeners. Right now I'm trying to get the April show by Simon Jones -- I think this is likely the same Simon Jones who reviews most folk-rock for FRoots magazine -- because it has a track from the new album by Maddy Prior's daughter. Real Audio streams run at 64K. More reports to come after I dig around some. Just what I need, another 3-10 hour/week time sink.
You have several choices: