That competition is fierce, with Deezer, We7, Rdio (North America), and the legal-but-not-licensed Grooveshark all present in this sector. Spotify is trying to prove itself the ubiquitous service that everyone needs compared to the also-rans people merely want. One of the ways it hopes to achieve this is with apps built around its platform. Which includes the fantastic, new and improved, Spotify Radio.

Spotify Apps

Spotify recently added apps to its heady mix of streaming music on multiple devices for an affordable price. I’m a big fan of this evolution of the service, and have already recommended five of the most addictive currently available. At the time of writing there are just 15 apps ready to install, but more are promised over the coming months.

One of those that didn’t get a mention in my previous write-up was Spotify Radio, partly because it was already present on the service, and partly because it’s so good I felt it deserved exploring in greater depth.

The new The Echo Nest-powered Spotify radio is a vast improvement on the old Spotify Radio. So much so that I feel the current Internet radio choice of the masses, Pandora, may be finished.

Spotify Radio

Spotify Radio is, by default, already added to the sidebar along with Top Lists. Both of which were in-built Spotify features before the addition of apps was even considered. But while Top Lists remains the same (barring an extra option to list top tracks and top albums by location) Spotify Radio has evolved.

It used to be a rather lame option which would play music according to the genres and decades (like the awful 80s) you’d selected. It barely worked, and didn’t have a high hit-rate for playing music you’d actually want to hear based on your previous selections.

Now, however, things are different. Open up the Spotify Radio app and you’re faced with a very simple-yet-elegant user interface. It has the current radio station you’re listening to at the top, recent radio stations underneath, and for those without the inspiration to choose their own, popular artists and popular genre radio stations listed at the bottom.

Clicking on any of these will instantly start a new radio station playing. There is also the option to ‘Create New Station‘, with a dropdown search bar giving you instant search results for both artists and individual tracks based on a Google-style autocomplete feature.

By Artist, Track, Or Genre

By Artist

This is a radio station based on the artist, in this case Metronomy. As Metronomy are an alternative indie band with a very unique sound this will throw up an eclectic mix of artists and songs. And some unknown hidden gems, no doubt.

By Track

This is a radio station based on an individual track, in this case Creep by Radiohead. As Radiohead are a British band, other bands from the U.K. will flourish, mostly with songs that are the antipathy of pop. Just as Creep is.

By Genre

This is a radio station based on a genre, in this case Alternative. Radio stations based on a genre are the most likely to throw up unexpected tracks. Musical genres are vast, and so the list of songs Spotify Radio can choose to play you is vast as well.

Music Discovery

As usual with Spotify, the Radio app is just the beginning of your musical journey. At some point you’ll hear a track you love but don’t know anything about. Which is when you need to delve back into Spotify and work some magic. Open Spotify Radio and you’ll be able to discover not only the artist responsible for that track but a lot more besides.

If you move your cursor across the playlist, you can highlight the currently-playing or one of the previously-played tracks. Click on it and you’ll be taken to that track in context within the album it comes from.

In this case by clicking on Norgaard by The Vaccines, I have discovered What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? You can then add the individual song or the full album to a playlist, star it for future reference, or even share it via a social network or two.

You can also explore more albums by the artist, or by clicking on the artist’s name, find out more about them and even see ‘Related Artists‘. One random song played in Spotify Radio has just opened up a whole new realm of music discovery. Not something that’s possible with the one-way, non-interactive dinosaur that is broadcast radio.

Conclusions

Spotify Radio can be used in many different ways:-

As a radio station creator, as the name suggests: Make a selection, press ‘Play‘, and you’ll have music blasting until you press ‘Stop‘.

As a tool for discovering new music: You love a particular band but have listened to them to death, then Spotify Radio will help you find artists of a similar style or mood.

As a means of discovering what’s popular: Keeping tabs on the ‘Popular‘ stations as shown in the screenshot above.

Have you used the new, improved Spotify Radio yet? If so, what do you think of it? Are there any features you’d like to see added, or anything Spotify could be doing better on this score or any others? Barring the permanent removal of all adverts, of course.

Radio is, by nature, a passive medium. You turn on the radio and you listen to music or news stories. You don’t control what stories or songs come up, meaning you’ll often stumble onto something new serendipitously. That’s part of the fun of the medium. Websites, on the other hand, are active. You go to a site and you pick what you want to read, watch or listen to. When one story finishes you continue browsing.

This self-selection means you only consume news you’re interested in, because you yourself are choosing what to consume. It also means you need to take an active role in picking stories, which is problematic if you wanted to listen to the news while doing something else. NPR’s Infinite Player is an experiment aimed at addressing this. It currently works in Safari and Chrome; versions of other browsers are in development.

For Comparison’s Sake

NPR’s website, by default, looks like any other news site. You can browse and read stories, and you can pick stories to listen to. You can even make a playlist of stories.

This is an extremely active version of NPR. Basically, nothing plays unless you pick the story and tell it to play.

When Google launched the Chrome Web Store, NPR quickly put out an app version of their site. This is cleaner, and makes it easier to listen to stories you like. It’s still however, an active tool – nothing plays unless you tell it to.

To Infinity…

Which brings me to the subject of this article – the Infinite Player. Open this site, sign in with your NPR account, and it starts playing right away:

The player always begins with the latest hourly update, giving you an overview of what’s happening right now. It will then start playing random, recent stories from a variety of NPR’s programs.

Controls are, by design, minimal. You can rewind thirty seconds and skip to the next story. You can also give each story a thumbs up or down. The more you use this, the more the player catches on to your interests. If you enjoy music stories more than political stories, for example, you’ll hear more about music and less about politics – provided you give feedback to the program as you’re listening.

You won’t hear no political stories, however. According to NPR, part of the point of this project is to bring serendipity back to Internet radio, meaning there will always be at least some variety in the stories you hear. This is important. You don’t want to create a walled garden of only stories you’re interested in. You might never learn anything new about the world that way.

Limitations

Of course, there are some limitations to this project. As of this writing it only works with recent versions of Safari and Chrome, being based on media functions other browsers don’t have yet. It’s also worth noting that this tool only includes national stories from NPR, meaning you’ll need to look elsewhere for local news (although there are local-news-enhanced versions for KQED, KPLU and Michigan Radio). Still, this thing is worth checking out. I’m enjoying it immensely. I myself would love to see other media outlets take an approach like this.

What do you think? Is this a valid experiment, or are people already tired of Pandora-style radio? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Let’s try to keep the conversation about the technology and ideas behind this software. Or, if you prefer, we could just talk about how NPR is an evil liberal network and how you prefer to get your news from more nuanced sources, such as Glenn Beck. That’s cool too.

While searching for an interesting topic this week, I realized that we’ve never really covered radio talk show hosts here at MUO. Both David and Dean discussed how you can get started in your own talk show host career by launching an Internet radio show, but what if you’re looking for popular radio show hosts to listen to while you’re online?

Listening to Top Radio Hosts Online

Before writing this article, I asked around amongst my MUO colleagues for some good ideas. Many of them listen to online radio sites like Digitally Imported, Sky.FM and cool science or technology Podcasts like RadioLab.

These are all awesome resources if you’re looking for something interesting to listen to. However, I wanted to offer specific radio hosts – popular, well-known personalities – that host podcasts and syndicated radio shows that offer free content you can listen to or watch online.

Coast To Coast With George Noory

The very first radio talk show host that I have to mention, because they cover topics that I’m most interested in, is George Noory over at Coast to Coast Radio.

Coast to Coast covers paranormal topics that run the entire gamut, including crop circles, UFOs and strange news. The shows are really interesting to listen to, at least as far as the entertainment factor goes.

Kim Komando Tech Reports

If you’re into technology (you’re here at MUO, so you must be, right?), then you’ll definitely want to check out the highly popular, syndicated show by Kim Komando.

Kim tests the latest tech gadgets and talks about online and offline technologies. She produces what are called “Kim’s Reports“, shows that cover all of the latest technology trends people are most interested in right now. You can watch Kim on Demand for free, but the archives are members only.

Al Sharpton & Civil Liberties

This next suggestion is one that I am including mostly because it is a radio show I turn to whenever I’m looking for a story to write about related to civil liberties or civil rights abuses. If there’s anyone that’s usually on top of those issues, it’s Al Sharpton.

I don’t always like the guy’s style or his approach to many of the stories that he covers, but when it comes to getting the word out there about issues of civil liberty, Sharpton’s the man.

The Delilah Love-Fest

Now, I’m as surprised as many of you will probably be that I’m going to suggest this – but I have to also recommend talk show host “Delilah“.

Delilah is all about stories of humanity – tales of kindness and love. Sometimes, the song dedications are a bit overboard. But, then again, I once found myself sitting in traffic, listening to a deployed soldier dedicating a song to his wife and kids, and found myself on the edge of tears. Click on “Listen All Day” to hear the show. Take my word for it, you’ll want to take the Delilah-love in small doses at first.

Neal Boortz For President?

If you’re a politically minded listener, I can’t leave out the ever-popular Neal Boortz. Neal is a published, New York Times bestselling author, and often goes into some major (and entertaining) political rants in his show.

I wouldn’t say that he’s overly right-wing. He’s a self-described Libertarian, and has no qualms about attacking both sides of the aisle on his radio show. Check out his show under Latest Audio and Video.

Jeremy Vine Covers the News

If you’re over in the UK, or anywhere in Europe for that matter, then you’ve probably heard of Jeremy Vine and his BBC talk show.

Jeremy’s focus is discussing the latest news and the most pressing social issues of the day. He does so in a format that’s interesting enough to make him one of the UK’s most popular talk show hosts. His show is well worth a look, and available for free online.

Glenn Beck – Another Conservative Show Host

Many of the top political talk show hosts in the U.S. are conservative. Glenn Beck is no exception, but he is certainly a little bit unique in how he covers stories compared to other hosts that lean more to the right than Glenn does.

While I disagree with most of his opinions, I do find his coverage of the “truth” to be somewhat refreshing at times, even though I’m not Conservative. Just click the yellow “Listen Now” button streaming audio.

Ricky Gervais – Offensive & Really Funny

As I try to do with my lists, I’ve saved my favorite for last. This offering might offend some people, because let’s face it, there’s little about Ricky Gervais that isn’t offensive. With that said, there’s also little about him that isn’t funny.

I was introduced to Ricky by a friend in the UK, long before Gervais ever became popular in the US. My friend forwarded me a single clip from one of Gervais’ podcasts, and in just a few moments I was doubled over from laughing. If you like your comedy with biting wit and offensive sarcasm, then Gervais is your man.

In the limited space that I have, I’m forced to stop here, but there are most certainly many more radio talk show hosts out there that are very popular, and who offer free streaming content from their websites. I was also curious about top talk show hosts from India or Asia, do you know of any? If you have any Western hosts that you feel should be on this list, please share your opinion in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

To see why all of these people love TuneIn so much, I decided to take it for a comprehensive spin. If you’re into music but not so much into radio, scroll down and let’s see if I can’t change your mind.

Picking A Station

As you launch the app, a station menu pops up, offering several ways to find your next station:

By “station” I mean an actual radio station – not just one broadcasting over the Internet.

The Music submenu offers a rich selection of genres:

And once you drill down into a specific genre, you get a list of stations, each with its own logo:

And now all that’s left is to tap a station and start listening. What’s cool is that there are stations from all over the world, not just the States. For example, here’s Boca Radio, from Spain:

Not all stations offer an amazing bitrate; Boca Radio, above, streams at only 32kbps, which is really quite low (but still okay, compared to “regular” radio). Some stations stream 128kbps, and some even go as high as 160kbps, which is a very nice bitrate. TuneIn adjusts the bitrate down if your connection can’t handle it.

Specialty Stations

One of the more interesting categories in the genre list is called “Specialty”, and hosts gems such as this station, called Birdsong Radio:

As you may have guessed, it plays… birdsongs. You can hear tweeting, chirping, warbling, and other nature sounds. It sounds like a weird idea at first, but it’s actually quite soothing (give it a try, really).

Background Indication

Once you switch from TuneIn to continue using your device for other things, you can easily access it again via a nice status bar indicator:

The indicator shows what station you’re listening to, as well as how far along the current song is. Tapping it once pops you right back into the app.

Settings

The settings screen is very simple, and looks like this:

That little TuneIn Pro notification at the top is the only plug for the commercial version I could see. Very low-key and tasteful. The “Shake for Related” functionality is off by default, and for good reason: When it’s on, TuneIn just switches stations when you shake the device. This can be nice if you have your phone sitting next to you and you want to give it a brisk shake if the current song is annoying. But if you have it in your pocket and are walking about, you would definitely want to keep it off.

By the way, a note about the look and feel of the Settings screen: The iOS-like on/off toggles don’t come with TuneIn, but with MIUI ROM, a free ROM for Android I have recently installed (I will tell you all about it in another post).

TuneIn For The Web

If you spend the bulk of your time in front of a PC, you may want to check the Web-based version of TuneIn, which we’ve recently covered.

Inducting TuneIn Radio Into The Best of Android

Last but not least, it is my great pleasure to induct TuneIn into MakeUseOf’s exclusive list of Best Android Apps. You can find it in the Music and Audio category in the good company of Slacker Radio, Shazam, SoundHound, and several other awesome applications that don’t start with the letter S. I’d also like to take this chance to thank readers Simun Simonsen, Jaseev Singh Anand and others who have taken the time to recommend TuneIn. Thanks, guys!

Let us know in the comments what you think of TuneIn.

Thankfully, there’s a little application for Linux that can solve this problem by playing the Internet streams that I want in a very discreet way.

About Radio Tray

Radio Tray does this in a very user-friendly way. It plays your selected radio stream and hides itself in the system tray. It also offers a couple of options to customize your listening experience.

Installation

In order to install this in Ubuntu, you can go into the Ubuntu Software Center and choose Radio Tray. For other distributions, you should be able to find a Radio Tray package with a name like radio-tray or something similar. Once the installation completes, you can go ahead and launch the application.

First Run

The first time it runs, it’ll ask you where you’d like to place the tray icon. On Ubuntu, you must choose App Indicator or else it won’t show. For other operating systems, Icon in the Notification Area will work.

If you choose an option and the tray icon does not appear, you’ll need to remove the /home/<user>/.local/share/radiotray folder and try again. Otherwise, you’ll see a tray icon that you can use to manipulate what Radio Tray does.

The Tray Icon

When you click on the icon, you will see that there are already a few categories present along with some Internet streams inside of them to get you started. You can play around with these to try out how Radio Tray works, although don’t be surprised if some of these default stations don’t connect. It seems that the default station list isn’t updated very often. When a station isn’t playing, the icon will stay gray, but when something is playing the icon will turn blue.

Preferences

Under preferences, you’ll find a couple options that you can make use of. There are menu items for Volume Up and Volume Down, for a sleep timer, for reloading bookmarks, and for Configuring Radios. If you want the entire system to shut down at a certain time, you can go to the terminal, and do the following:

Type

sudo at 17:30

, then hit enter and type in your password, then type

shutdown -h now

 and hit Ctrl + D. You can replace 17:30 with the time you actually want it to turn off.

Configuring Radios

When you configure the radios, you can change the groups, stations inside the groups, add separators, move them all around to your preferred order, and plenty more. Radio Tray supports virtually any audio formats (as long as the codecs are installed), so it shouldn’t matter what kind of format the radio stream is.

Conclusion

Radio Tray is a very simplistic app that will play your radio streams simply and easily. With all of its functions and interface hidden in a little tray icon and its low memory usage, this little application does wonders for all music lovers.

What’s your favorite Internet stream player? Why do you like it the most? Let us know in the comments!

Personally speaking, I find online radio stations the best source for some quality random easy listening music. But that’s not the only genre I switch on to of course…because the sheer variety of radio stations helps me switch back and forth between talk shows, educational episodes, social commentaries, and of course, news and sports.

Perhaps, that explains my search for the next big thing in internet radio. Perhaps that also explains why I am going to talk about a new one called TuneIn Radio here.

Tune Into 50,000 Radio Stations And 120,000 Shows Worldwide

When it comes to selecting an online radio service, the number of stations it can give you with a mouse click is a prime consideration. TuneIn taps into that number above – 50,000. Quite enough for a lifetime. Quite a lot of variety too with stations covering music, spoken radio, and sports. The screenshot displays the kind of mixed bag you can find here.

Before tuning into TuneIn, do take a few seconds to register. It’s free and important because your location helps TuneIn serve local radio stations tailored for your ears. Registration gives you three more important benefits –

• You can view world radio schedules in your time zone.
• You can save or share station presets.
• You can play presets in any TuneIn-enabled device.

Play TuneIn in Any Supported Portable Device

For those who like to carry their radio listening pleasures in their pocket, TuneIn offers a lineup of apps that you can download to your smartphone or tablet and listen to the world from wherever you are. Devices supported include – iPhone/iPad, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Palm, and Samsung Bada. And of course, as we show you TuneIn plays just as well in your browser. If you are a regular user, you can also download the Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin.

TuneIn also has a Pro version for a small price that lets you record what you’re listening to.

Rediscover Radio with Some Nice TuneIn Features

Ultimately, it boils down to key features when one goes looking for the next great thing in internet radios. Here are some that TuneIn shows off.

The simple interface: TuneIn arranges all its 50,000 stations around three key areas – Music, Talk, and Sports. You can also manually search for stations, shows, and artists with keywords from the search bar.

Quick loading Flash player with rapid streaming: The Flash player (TuneIn Web Tuner) is smooth and loads pretty quickly. Buffering and streaming was absolutely smooth on my 256 kbps connection. A small statistic displays the quality of the broadcast for the percentage of users. You can also launch some streams with your desktop media player.

Pause and Play: You can pause live streams for up to 30 minutes and then click to play them again.

Location sensitive: TuneIn geo-locates your city and shows local stations in your time zone. You can of course go into My Info on the top-right and enter new zip code, city, state or time zone if you wish to change your location.

Browse by location: You can go beyond your local stations by selecting Browse by location and drilling down to the country. Surprisingly, Antarctica is also listed. U.S. radio stations are covered by states.

Bookmark your favorite stations, categories or show as presets: A single click and you can set them as presets. You can create a playlist with your selected songs. Clicking on the preset songs takes you to the lineup of stations playing that particular song.

Tech talks: Of course, as I am somewhat of a geek, my interest in technology takes me to the Talks section. There’s quite a nice selection of stations (approximately 2500) talking about latest developments under the Consumer & Technology Radio category.

You may also like: TuneIn also gives you recommendations for similar programs and stations based on your likes.

TuneIn Radio also gives background information on the stations it covers and connects you the websites. What I like about TuneIn is that the information is clearly labeled, for instance – which stations are available, which ones are restricted, and which ones are not available at all. I don’t have to waste time looking for a station to stream as I can quickly select one that is broadcasting smoothly.

Explore TuneIn and let us know your take on it. Which is your favorite internet radio station? Do you prefer tuning your real radio or do you launch your browser to catch the airwaves with an online option?

There are so many awesome websites and applications you can use to download music to any PC. Simon wrote about Free MusicZilla (one of my favorites), and he also covered some of the best sites where you can download free music. Of course, most users will be more than accustomed to paying for and downloading music from sites like iTunes or Amazon.

The problem I have is that when I download music to a PC, I may want to access that music from different PCs in my house. To solve that problem, I decided to create a sort of Wi-Fi PC Radio server where I can store all of my music and then allow users from anywhere to stream that music.

How The Wi-Fi PC Radio Setup Works

The way this setup works includes a web server with Subsonic installed. Technically, you don’t need to set up a web server – when you install Subsonic, it will use port 80 and serve up its own webpage. If you already have a web server, you can configure Subsonic to use its own subfolder within the public html folder.

When you first install Subsonic on your “server” PC, you’ll see the Subsonic Music Streamer icon appear in the task bar.

Right-click and go to “Subsonic Control Panel” to quickly set up how you would like the streaming service to run. This is also where you go to start and stop the service.

Click on the “Settings” tab to set up what server port the service will use, and the path where Subsonic should run from.

Once you have Subsonic running, you can either access the system by going to “http://localhost/” on the PC itself, or open up a browser on any other computer on your Wi-Fi network and type in the IP address of the server PC where Subsonic is running.

The first thing you’ll need to do is set up the admin account.

Set up a new password, and then start working through the menu systems to set everything up. The only area you really need to configure for your new jukebox-like Wi-Fi music streamer to work properly is to set up media folders on the server PC where you’ll store all of the music available for your users to listen to. You do this by clicking on the “Media Folders” link in the menu.

Name the folder, type the local link for the music directory and make sure it’s enabled. When you click Save, the music files stored in that folder will become available to all users that connect to your new music server on your Wi-Fi network. If you have music playlists set up, such as iTunes playlists, you can point Subsonic to those folders under the “General” settings link.

You can also define how your users can stream music over the network to their own computers or devices. Choices include launching the user’s own music players, or utilizing the embedded Jukebox player that is integrated with Subsonic.

This is the most convenient solution for users because no local player is required – they can play music just by logging into your Subsonic PC and clicking on the play button.

Another very cool feature of Subsonic that goes beyond just serving up music over your local Wi-Fi network is that you can also serve up video streams and podcast feeds.

This isn’t really anything too special, considering that you can just connect to those video or podcast streams yourself, but by adding all of those media stream links to your Subsonic server, you can keep everything organized on one computer system and then access it from anywhere. No longer will you have to wonder where you saved that podcast link, or where you saved that music file that you downloaded. Just log into your Subsonic server and it’s all there.

Another very cool feature of Subsonic is that as an admin you can track the overall usage of the server. What are the most popular files? Which files are currently being accessed? You can even see a trend of the bandwidth users have used over time.

Whenever users log in, all available music files are listed in the left menu bar. Each individual user can build their own player list by just adding the “+” sign next to the song. That song gets added to the personal player list, where the user can click on the “Play” button in the embedded player to get started. The files are streamed right over the network to the user’s PC or mobile device.

You can even add a special Guest account for people that visit your home and have a laptop or mobile device that can connect to your home Wi-Fi network. What’s especially cool about Subsonic is that it’s available for multiple platforms, and there are even Subsonic apps for Android, iPhone and Windows Mobile.

Your friends and family will love the fact that whenever they visit you, they can have access to a wide array of great music to listen to – and you protect your music investment, because the server does not allow the downloading of music files, only streaming.

Set up your own WiFi radio PC with Subsonic and see if it makes organizing and accessing your media collection easier. Let us know how you set up your server, and what people thought about your streaming music collection. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.