72 new of 210 responses total.
Is this 'buffering' and 'network congestion'? We will try with 16M RAM and the old version of RealAudio that came with bruin's computer when he gave it to me.
It is 'buffering', done because of 'network congestion'. Incidentally, the packets may (will) arrive out of order normally, because of the processes for maximizing network capacity by continually rerouting them. So you can get hung up because just one packet went "round the barn".
I have been trying out RealAudio Player 3 and 4 for Win31. As promised, 3 works with 8M RAM and 4 with 16M. But most of the sites I try to listen at say that they require a newer version, or G2, or that they cannot play files of type vnd.rn-realaudio (and Netscape cannot find a plugin for this). Would 5.0 do any better? The later versions are only for Win95 or later. So far I have managed to listened to one station from Chile (with a lot of network congestion but good classical music) and one from the Czech Republic (very fine quality reception but loud American pop music). Netradio.com never works even on our Win96 computer with RealAudio 7 - why? How many different formats are being broadcast? One station offered Windows Media or Realplayer 5 (it would not do 4). I am tired of experimenting - has anyone compared 4 and 5? All RealAudio talks about is improvements in the video. It works without MS Video for WIndows if you don't mind frequent messages. (4 does not work with 8M RAM, there is a message about bandwidth).
RealAudio says to try version 5.0 but did not say whether it will play the files that 4.0 will not. They give very short answers.
WITR said Version 5 would work, but Real Audio keeps giving me error messages and crashing Netscape. I did get WKAR working, very clearly.
classicalwebcast.com is a very nice listing of about 50 classical stations around the world, including Estonia, Korea, and Bulgaria, with clear indication of whether you need Windows Media Player (for Win95 only), G2 (Win95) or 16K (etc. up to over 50K) mono or stereo. (WKAR does not need G2 and they listed it as G2). For my hardware (16M RAM) and software (RealPlayer 5) I have had the best luck with lower fidelity mono broadcasts (found one 8K, many 15 or 16K and 20K). Seattle KING works but with a lot of gaps in the sound while buffering. More RAM would probably fix this. Clicking on 16K mono takes you right to the broadcast, or you can click on the station name for its home page. I got Adelaide Australia (unlistenable quality), tried to get Radio Bartok (timed out, busy), and crashed on Czech Radio 3, which is classical, as is Croatian Radio 3. Another time I got Czech Radio 3, classical, jazz, ethnic, etc., and got some American popular tune of the forties (is this ethnic?). We will probably set up one FreeBSD (UNIX) computer with Netscape and Realaudio for Linux and lots of RAM. Is there a Windows Media Player for Linux? (Is there a RealAudio for Linux?) People have been complaining recently that my phone is busy all day.
Peter Ribbens, who runs this site, tells me that WKAR broadcasts FM in G2 and AM in something that I can hear with version 5. That explains why it was all talk. Some of the file compression and other messages may result from my using Win31 and not Win95, rather than dependent on the version of RealPlayer.
I have yet to try listening to radio on the web. After reading the account of sound quality in post #144, I feel disinclined to try.
Some stations have much better quality than others, and the statistics for them reveal 100% of the signal was received either when due, or soon enough afterwarsd for buffering to make up for that. The really bad ones lose what sounds like 50%. Probably listening to stations that broadcast at rates more than 20K, with a modem faster than 28K, would improve overall quality. Many of the stations broadcast at two or more rates, for people with modems or direct connects (up to 128K), in mono or stereo.
RealPlayer 7 basic is available for Win 95 or later, Mac 8, Solaris 2.6, or Linux 2.0. Does Linux come with a free dialer, or are there shareware dialers for it? Not much point in trying to listen with Win31/Shiva.
Linux does indeed include a dialer. (Linux doesn't have networking as an add-on like DOS and Win 3x. It's all part of the basic package)
Salon today has an overview article of the Internet radio scene, which they think is getting ready to explode in popularity: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/06/internet_radio/index.html One little bit from the article: New Orleans jazz station WWOZ says it now has 50,000 online listeners to go with its 50,000 over-the-air listeners, and it is getting 10-15% of its financial contributions from outside its broadcast area.
There are now some 2500 stations listed on real.com's "Radio Tuner" website, and quality is very good (for broadcast radio with a reasonable-quality tuner; it isn't up there with my rooftop antenna and Linn Kudos tuner) most of the time in experience. Sometimes "Net Congestion" interferes with a specific station at a specific time, so I just go to another one. (I'm using a PowerMac 8600/300 and single-channel ISDN, for comparison purposes.) (Should we move the Internet radio part of this discussion to its own item?)
Sure, start another item if you think there is enough more to say about it.
Hey, move it to the 'radio' .cf
OOPs, it's already there.
http://www.inside.com today offers a nice story on the two competing satellite radio systems, Sirius and XM, which are rapidly moving towards market. These will be subscription services for about $10/month, intended for car drivers. They plan to distinguish themselves through the personalities of their DJs. Sirius plans to recruit serious and knowledgable people; XM plans to recruit wacky lunatics. XM's plans are driven by Lee Abrams, "a radio legend credited with inventing every calcified format in existence -- album and classic rock, urban contemporary, smooth jazz, Howard Stern." No mention of classical music -- sorry Sindi -- but each service is supposed to have 50 channels so maybe a classical service will be tossed in. http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,7859_9,00.html
Lynx will not let me view this site.
What is streaming MP3? Is it the same as RealAudio? If not, is anyone broadcasting it and how would one listen to it? What minimum modem speed would be needed? At 33K, it took me a lot longer to download a 1M MP3 file than to listen to it, but I don't recall the ratio.
Streaming in general is a technology better served by a connection which is fast enough to download data faster than the data can be handled and played back to you. A 33k dial-up connection is not likely to make for a worthwhile experience of streaming mp3.
Streaming MP3s are, I believe, Shoutcast streams http://www.shoutcast.com (although M$ is doing something similiar in another format) It is different from RealAudio in several ways, from what I understand. I admit to being self-taught in computer audio. RealAudio is another proprietary format, and although popular, still requires specialized encoding and server software. Shoutcast and streaming mp3s are making this quite a bit easier. I've been listening to several different "homegrown" streams lately. I do this by pointing WinAMP (not sure about cross-platform availability) to the URL for the stream. Granted, for full, deep, stereo sound a broadband connection is a definite must, but, as with mp3s themselves, the encoding parameters of the music determines the bandwidth required. For example, at work where I am stuck with a 56K dialup connection, I can listen to my favourite Celtic music stream, but only because the "D.J." encoded his music at a low bitrate suitable for dialup streaming. Most decent mp3s are encoded at a bitrate of 128 or 160 Kbps, with theoretically would require at least ISDN for decent streaming. I hope that helps. Again, I'm no expert; YMMV
Are any MP3s encoded at 28K? (mono) Some RealAudio broadcasts are.
Looked at that site. They offer a choice of players for Windows (Winamp), Mac, or Linux/X. Any chance that a DOS MP3 player could be made to work (QV, DOSAMP)? I looked up classical broadcasts, of which there are 18 (most are mixed with jazz or other things), and the bitrates are listed as 128 (very few), 56, 32, 24, 20 (Moscow) and even 18. Presumably a 33K modem could handle up to 32 (with some gaps).
Winamp requires Win95 or later. Hopefully Arachne or Newdeal will come up with some DOS-based way to hear streaming MP3. Does this sound any better than RealAudio at the same modem speed?
www.mpeg.org/mpeg/mpeg-audio-player.html has lots of links to mp3 info, including one to players for most operating systems - 3 players for DOS, some for OS/2, BeOS, Solaris, etc. I might experiment with streaming MP3 and Win31/Netscape. Can't be any worse than RealAudio. Shoutcast seemed to be implying that only their WinAMP for Win95 would work.
My gut feeling is that no streaming system is going to sound particularly good after it's run through a modem-speed connection, even a 56K one.
How much worse would the best streaming audio sound at 56K than the Toledo classical station as heard in Ann Arbor, 60 miles away?
Yeetch. Tough call, as the damage being done to the sound is different in the two transmissions. Streaming is going to sound tinny, sort of like AM radio, with dropouts. The FM signal from Toledo, particularly in the daytime, is going to have that nasty hash/static noise. Name your poison, I guess.
Since Toledo is at many times of the day and week the only classical station hearable in Ann Arbor, and at some times there are no classical broadcasts at all (6-6:30 pm) even a tinny internet broadcast would be welcome. Toledo is not as bad in mono - I almost never try to listen to classical music on the radio in stereo as we have no classical stations close enough.
WKAR is often classical, and usually hearable. The only place I regular lose it is on Packard at State.
WKAR is mostly talk these days. They do pipe in classical at night, I think around 8pm is when they change from talk to music.
It is? I get mostly classical during the day (though I listen infrequently - only when driving).
WUOM *used* to be classical and is *now* mostly talk. WKAR is still classical when I switch to it, which is less often. I usually listen to WEMU, but lately I've been tuning W4 Country whenever WEMU is not broadcasting news. WKAR is the fall back when I can't stand any more jazz or twang.
Oops, right. I confused WKAR and WUOM.
Scott's resp:169 sounds like a description of WUOM, not WKAR, before WUOM dumped its remaining classical music to run BBC news overnight. WKAR-FM's web schedule says they run classical music from 8am - 4pm, with hourly news breaks, 7pm-11pm (except for the Friday jazz show), and then midnight through 5 am. That's Monday through Friday, the weekend schedule packs in all sorts of non-classical stuff like "Prairie Home Companion" and the Sunday night folk music shows.
(several responses slipped in. The price of research. :) )
Re 173 - this is why I was hoping to find some other source of classical music for 4-7 pm (Toledo comes back around 6:30, Windsor plays a mixture including some classical from 4-6), for Friday evening, and for Sat. and Sunday. Toledo plays more classical Fri-Sun than does WKAR. Canada is pretty hopeless for weekends. I really should not be tying up my phone line, though. When were low-power stations going to start using the frequencies not currently used in an area? Any updates on digital broadcasting over the air?
There are two subscription services for digital radio from satellites which are supposed to go live Real Soon Now. I'm not sure what's holding up the debut of the services; the last news article I saw talked about the radio presenters they were hiring and their differing programming philosophies. I thought the services were supposed to be up and running this year. Probably there are delays in getting the receivers -- mostly car-based -- to market. I have only heard rumors about vague plans for digital terrestrial broadcasting in the USA: the FCC would like to reclaim today's FM band by moving everyone to digital systems, similar to the planned shift to HDTV for television. My guess is that we are 5-10 years away from any such service. Canada is supposed to moving forward briskly on digital land-based broadcasting. Low power FM broadcasting is mired in political controversy. Congress, at the direction of the broadcast industry, is trying to pass a law to make the whole plan illegal. Clinton is vowing to veto any bill this is slipped into. I don't know what the next president's position on this will be. My suggestion for your gaps: do what I do, tape some broadcasts off the net onto any handy cassette recorder and use those tapes to fill up the empty time.
Thanks for the info and predictions. Regarding taping broadcasts, the quality is not good enough to bother. I have an LP collection and am also too lazy to put a record on, and recording is even more work. Why is low-powered broadcasting a political issue? It seems to be legal in dorms, so why could someone not, for instance, broadcast at a power that would be heard only within Ann Arbor city limits, at some frequency not received here? The Czechs and Dutch have cable radio. In the Czech dorm the radios got only one station. The Dutch pay an annual tax on each non-portable receiver and I think that, like the BBC, the taxpayers get to vote on what the stations will play. There are also rock stations broadcast from ships outside the legal boundaries of the country. I would appreciate cable radio that did not also require paying for cable TV service, and that was not just a random sequence (computer generated) of CDs, without comment or theme.
It's a political issue because it threatens to take audience away from the current broadcasters, who have spent money for the privilege of broadcast, are making money broadcasting, and so have money to give to legislators to make it a political issue. Last I heard, those off-shore broadcasters were violating international treaties on use of the electromagnetic spectrum. That could easily be defined as "piracy" and punished accordingly. (Earlier this evening, I (re-)read the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to define piracy.)
Perhaps permission to broadcast low-power could be given only to stations with formats not already available in an area, which would appease current broadcasters. But I don't see how the current broadcasters have any right to complain about someone else being allowed to broadcast, when they themselves have that right and are not paying for it.
Low power broadcasting is actually a rather active topic currently. The National Association of Broadcasters is fighting low power licences, claiming intereference with their signals by amateur equipment. Advocates for low power licensing point out that it currently costs several million to get any kind of broadcast license, since all the currently allowable high power licenses are already owned.
Is the AM band considered to be full? There used to be several AM classical stations in the Detroit area. (I was wrong about Friday night, Canada is currently broadcasting Mahler and Beethoven, and Toledo something that might be considered classical. Why does WKAR switch to jazz on Friday evenings?)
In general, broadcasters are losing interest in the AM band. Most listeners seem to reject AM for music listening; almost all AM stations are now used for programs of people talking. Most AM stations have gone to the cheapest possible programming, nationally syndicated talk shows. What little music survives on AM seems to be mostly either swing-era pop, or ethnic music aimed at immigrant communities. For a while, WJR was playing Detroit Symphony shows on weekend evenings after the Detroit commercial classical station folded. But that seems to have stopped; there is no mention of it on WJR's web site. MSU's NPR station WKAR plays an evening of jazz for the same reason they play an evening of folk music; they feel a responsibility to cover some musical fields which have no commercial presence on the dial in Lansing. The underlying problem is that there is only one noncommercial channel in the market, but there are lots more noncommercial types of music needing an outlet; this is the problem that we're hoping some sort of digital radio system will solve.
A few months ago Boulder/Denver's NPR classical station was bought out (or taken over somehow, I don't remember all the details) and the classical programming forced to move to an AM station. It was rather a shock to hear exactly the same stuff in a lower quality medium. I don't know, but I think they've obtained another FM station more recently.
There is - or was, last time I was in its receiving range in the daytime, which isn't often - an AM-only classical station in San Francisco, but that's because they sold the FM outlet, closed themselves down, and then changed their minds and restarted on the AM station they still had. I was very impressed with WGUC when I visited Cincinnati, so that's the classical station I usually listen to when I want a web broadcast. I'm sure there are other good ones, but one at a time is enough for me. I actually prefer listening to music than voices on the web, and not just because they only place I like to listen to radio talk is in the car, where I have no web capacity. To my ear, voices tend to break up very audibly, while music is not so obviously low-fidelity. But I may just have a bad ear.
...or a differently sensitive ear. Some people seem to be very well attuned to the sound of peoples' voices, others to musical sounds, others to mechanical sounds, etc.
So why is UofM wasting its FM capabilities on talk? BigNet (formerly MichCom) is now selling DSL lines for $10 more than the cost of a phone line plus ISP service (if you contract for 2 years). This might be the solution - fast connection that does not tie up the phone line and has no dependence on a flaky Shiva dialler (which RealAudio said is what the problem was when I kept disconnecting while trying to listen). This ISP is now offering shell accounts that you can access either dialup from Michigan (as mich.com used to) or by DSL line from anywhere in the US. There must be some way to do streaming MP3 without Windows.
U of M dropped classical programming on WUOM because the station was in steep decline in both number of people listening, and in user contributions. These numbers have roughly doubled since WUOM dumped classical music, according to the news stories I've seen on the subject.
That's because there are administrators at UM that are more interested in quantity than in quality. What does "steep decline" mean? Good programming, adequately supported *by the institution* remains good programming. Reducing the quality of the programming and showing an increase in listeners and contributions doesn't mean anything, except that that is the nature of people - quality always loses to quantity, *unless one has a policy opposing that*. UM did not. One really should look at the number of people that *don't* listen to WUOM. By what percentage was that reduced by the change in programming? I'd say the change in programming made an almost imperceptible change in the percentage that don't listen, even though it brought in more $$$ to UM's coffers.
I don't know the details of WUOM; there was extensive coverage in the Observer as the massacre of classical music happened. My guess is that UM, like MSU, made substantial cuts in their direct funding to the NPR station and told the stations they had to make up the difference in public fundraising.
That is precisely what happened. That also gives us those seemingly endless, repetitive, fund-raising weeks. I'm surprised that those forced to do those don't commit suicide more often. What do they get out of being so upbeat and cheerful for a week or so? Their salary, presumably, but their real profession is usually not show business, and having to grovel and dance for their dinner must be demeaning to many of them. Do you really think they are all really doing it just for the "cause"? The "cause" being, being able to buy canned programming from NPR?
Here's another article about the two digital satellite systems: http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/ttimes/lat_radio001026.htm The two competing firms have web sites: XM Satellite Radio: http://www.xmradio.com Sirius Satellite Radio: http://www.siriusradio.com The quote from Sirius: "We don't just have a classical music channel. We have three separate channels: symphonic, chamber and opera." Doesn't look like they'll have a folk music channel, though. Sirius says they'll be operating in January 2001. You can sign up for a mailing list for information if you want to be a charter subscriber. The quote from XM, the Lee Abrams operation: "XM's more traditional classical channel will, ((Abrams)) said, be 'very sensual, heavy with female voices.'" Their site mentions folk music, though. I got a suspicion they don't mean my sort of folk music.
Sirius has three classical channels, gosh. Netradio (www.netradio.com) has at least eight. Besides an opera channel, they have two chamber music channels (one for piano music, one for everything else), two symphonic channels (one for actual symphonies, one for other stuff which appears to be mostly light classics), two early music channels (one called "Chant", god help us, and one more general), and something called "Quiet Classics". There was an article in _The New Republic_ recently, at http://www.tnr.com/online/goldberg071000.html, complaining that the proliferation of micro-market net radio stations is destroying a sense of general community. I can't see that as a wholly bad thing: "general community" too often means "lowest common denominator", though to be fair the author had stations like KPFA in mind. Still, I never listen to stations like that, because they're too damn eclectic: I have no idea what kind of thing I'm likely to get. The article mentioned sonicnet, in a disparaging way as the ultimate in solipsism for its support of personal stations, but I was intrigued enough to go over and check it out. I have to say I liked what I saw, and set up my own station for my non-classical tastes. If you haven't seen it, they give you a list of a couple dozen genres and subgenres (I had no idea that "East Coast Rap" and "West Coast Rap" were different subgenres) which you can use to make a rough choice, and then you can adjust individual artists in those genres on a 0-5 scale. I tinkered with a few (up with Renaissance, out with Rod Stewart), but otherwise left it alone, mostly because most of the performers are people I've never heard, or even heard of. So what I like about this setup is not so much my control over the music as the opportunity to hear new music that I might like, without either having to tread through broadcast pop radio sludge, or hunt down things on the web for myself. If I like or dislike something new, I can change the settings, and any given song that annoys you, you can just press the skip button and get on to the next one. How I wish I could do _that_ on broadcast radio!
What is sonicnet and how do you make it work?
There is a link to sonicnet from the New Republic article, but I should have put it in. The home page is radio.sonicnet.com. You can choose from pre-set stations or invent your personal station. You do this by picking a couple favorite genres from a list (I'd advise against more than that: it waters down your selection too much), which then generates a list of performers at 1-5 stars, which you can then adjust to personal preference. (For instance, I love folk but I hate Dylan, so zero stars for him.) You can also add other artists individually, even ones not on the pre-set list, if they're in the database. Every time you log on, the system creates a playlist from your current list of artists, weighted by current number of stars. You can skip to the next selection at any time. There's no choice of individual albums or songs: in practice you hear mostly recent releases or re-releases (putting Thompson at 5 stars means I'm getting a lot from "Mock Tudor"), punctuated by occasional Office Depot and Slim Jim commercials. I think it's pretty cool, though I wouldn't want it to be my only web station. Fidelity at 56K is not too great.
I tried to put together my own personal classical station. After following all the instructions, it told me I had successfully added Blues (sic) and then displayed below that one line where I was to tell them if I wanted to hear a little or a lot of Bach, Mozart and Tchaikovsky (all spelled right). I get the impression you are not supposed to be a classical fan if you are using their 'stations' - classical is something you might want to mix in with the real stuff. Then I tried to find out the hardware requirements and after loading all the graphics (can't see anything otherwise, it is all images instead of text) I got a page with a lot of bullets and nothing after them. At this point I concluded that I probably did not have what it took to use their services. I informed them of my experience in response to an automated e-mail that arrived shortly after asking for broken links, etc. Is this 'station' something that utilizes RealAudio?
Keesan - Possibly your connection is too slow, though I use Sonicnet on a 56K modem without any problem about things loading. Maybe it was just a bad day. Try again? I don't quite follow why you think you accidentally added "Blues" when you then got a list of Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, which suggests you did indeed get the classical section. They have some pre-set classical stations on the service, too: you can find them under a link labeled "Radio Sonicnet Stations" at the top of the page, or from a pull-down menu labeled "Choose a station." But if your classical tastes are as picky and idiosyncratic as mine, and you still want to create your own station, let me try to describe the process in more detail. What you get when you log on and ask to create a station is a list of genres, with a set of radio buttons labeled 0-5 after each of them. To create an all-classical station, leave all the other genres at 0 and put the one classical genre (called "Classical and Romantic") at 4 or 5. Clicking OK at the bottom should, as I recall, take you to the page listing a bunch of composers of the 1750-1900 era, each with 0-5 stars after them. You can edit your preferences by clicking on a name, which causes another little window to pop up with a set of the radio buttons on it. Pick your choice and confirm. Then, if you want to add composers from outside this period - there are a lot of performers/composers from all genres in the database who are not in the genre lists - do a "Search by Artist" and type in the composer's name. A list of names fitting that word string will come up, and you click on the name as above. As for technical requirements, the only ones I know of are in "Player Settings", which offers a choice between "Modem" and "DSL/ISDN Cable Modem/T1", and another choice between Windows Media Player, RealPlayer G2, and "I don't care".
Thanks for all the info. Is RealPlayer G2 the one that will not work with Win31? I don't have room on my hard drive for Win95 (or a whole lot of interest in learning to use it). The site told me, on the same page, that I had successfully chosen Blues, while just below that it displayed Mozart etc. I may try again some day, after getting the neighbor to come over with his Win95 CD and install it on an empty computer with a CD-ROM drive. Possibly my browser (Netscape 3) could not handle the site properly. (Netscape 4 takes up too much space). Hopefully other grexers will benefit from your instructions.
My modem is 28K - works on a few RealAudio stations. I think I was using Realaudio 4. Crashed so often that I gave up. RealAudio blames it on the Shiva dialer. I really need different hardware and software if I am going to continue this experiment.
From: tuomas leikola <tobo@sci.fi> if you want to stream with windows, you can use winplay3 16bit, if you still can find it somewhere.. the 16-bit version is a lot faster than the 32-bit version, and it supports m3u files (not pls files, you will have to extract the url yourself.) the key number should not be hard to find, at days mp3 players were a new thing (back on 486) winplay3 was the only considerable player there was :) ------------ ------ What is a m3u file? A pls file? A key number? Has anyone in this conf listened to streaming mp3s with win31?
I could find only Winplay3 for Win95.
I have come across more comments (I think they were on Usenet somewhere) by people who found the Sonicnet interface hard to understand and impossible to use. I have no idea why they (and you) are having problems while I, with an Athlon chip but only a 56K modem on an ordinary phone line, find it works perfectly every time. I've been on the other side of disputes like this (for instance, I can never get superglue to stick to anything), so I know how frustrating it can be.
Not even your fingers?
Maybe you need a 56K modem to get it to work? I used my fastest, a 33K. It probably would not have sounded so good anyway.
It doesn't even sound so hot at 56K, its biggest problem. I think of it as AM radio, which doesn't sound terrific either. Having found on occasion that songs I enjoyed on the car radio sounded terrible with CD quality and no background noise, I'm not upset about this.
Sonicnet just replieed (my help equest went astray). Their online system rquirements (under Help) call for Realplayer G2, which I think requires Win95, which I do not have. They also suggest a DSL line, a fast Pentium, 64M RAM, etc. Will see if Arachne will play streaming MP3 - there are hints to that effect in the latest version. The tech support also suggested hooking up the computer to my stereo system for better-than-radio sound.
DSL you don't need. I know that because I don't have it at home. I have those other things, though (except I have an AMD Athlon, not a *ych pfu* Pentium) [religious wars, never mind]
It sounds like all you really need is Win95 (to handle RealAudio G2) and 16M RAM and a 28K modem, and a fast 486. We were listening to Realaudio G2 on this combination before. I hate to bother installing 60M Win95, then Dialup Networking, then 15M download of Netscape 4 (expands to 28M), but we have enough comptuers that I could sacrifice one just for that. Or listen to LPs.
News item from zdnet.com and wsj.com. A company called "Supertracks" has an idea for improving the profitability of Internet radio. According to the article, Supertracks claim that the costs of streaming radio are so high that a user who listens to high-quality sound for 1.5 hours per day costs the webcaster $81 per year. Their solution? They figure you listen to the same songs over and over again anyway, so they download a library of 400 songs to your computer and then only the play order has to be sent out from the central office. They say they'll swap out 100 songs per month. This is supposed to cut the cost to $15 per listener.
I've only recently been experimenting more with Internet radio but so far I find it dramatically preferable to broadcast stations.. While Supertracks' suggestion may be technically sound, I can't imagine it working out very well with clearance from the record labels.
Just finished up two evenings of streaming Real Audio world music programs onto, um, cassette. How low tech, but I have the hardware and it plays nice in the car. I find that the stream speed which Real Audio negotiates varies with the time of day: during the business day I can't get much better than 11K, which is sub-AM quality, but starting around 4 or 5 I can usually get 96K, which is just a little sub-FM with artifacts, and after 7 pm I can get 96K reliably. I don't know if the bottleneck is at my end, at the program source, or on the network backbones. Approximately eight more CDs which I must find. Now I'm looking for a source for Italian political rap CDs. This stuff is at http://www.wen.com, and the best shows are hosted by Ian (not jethro tull) Anderson and Charlie Gillett. I've ranted about how wonderful this stuff is before.
You have several choices: