Why use your computer as a megabucks radio when you already have a car radio, a clock radio and a Walkman?
“Because you can” isn’t enough of an answer. You have to finish the sentence.
Because you can listen to stations from all over the world without buying a shortwave radio. Because you can find music to fit your mood instead of twisting your mood to match the station. Because you can listen to radio from long ago, not just far away.
But it won’t be easy. This radio doesn’t have a dial with a scan button or a tuner preset with your favorites. (You’ll have to tackle some technical issues too. )
What it does have is an abundance of Internet vendors and programmers trying to create the Web site you’ll use like a tuner. The results are mixed. Weeks of scanning the computer “dials” failed to turn up one site good enough to be my one and only. Instead, I began to pick favorites in various categories, knowing that I would have to mix and match to make on-line radio work for me.
Spinner.com promises more than 100 channels of free music and it delivers. The channels are divided into 10 music genres representing just about every teen or adult musical interest: rock, classical, oldies, jazz and blues, urban and dance. There’s also a channel called Just4Kids Programming, which is where Spinner shines.
The channels are designed with a good mix of the specific (Classic Rock, British Inv, MotownSound), diverse (Chicago Blues, Delta Blues, Celtic, Latin) and eclectic (Nature Sounds, Movie Scores, Baroque). My favorite genres might be the ones that don’t match local radio: “themes” like El Nino (to help you weather the storms), Urban Divas and “moodfood” with offerings ranging from Laugh Trax and Relax Trax to LoveGonebad and the gothic Melancholia. Drawback: Getting the most out of it requires yet another software download. Plus: The software Spinner and Spinner Plus are free and the commercials are fairly unobtrusive. (star star star star)
NetRadio (www.netradio.com) offers more channels (150 plus), but it also looks more cluttered than the somewhat elegant Spinner.com. It’s also more blatantly commercial. If you like to shop for CDs on-line this might be a way to go since clicking on a type of music brings up related CDs for sale. Again, the channels are divvied by type. The types here include Christian, Electronics and a broadband area for listeners with high speed access. Parents might enjoy tuning into Kidz Radio with a Kidz music channel and KidzNews. Drawback: You have to have another window open to see a play list. Plus: It uses the ubiquitous RealAudio. (star star star 1/2)
Stuck in the ’60s? Feverish for the ’40s?
DiscJockey.com (http://discjockey.com) is organized by decade from the ’40s to the ’90s by genre, and by genre within each decade. Themes include Musical Meltdown, Halloween Hits, Contemporary Christian and Industrial Rhythms. Personal Favorite: The ’70s Jukebox From Hell. Drawback: Most shows come with play lists that let you jump in for a favorite song. Uses RealPlayer. (star star star)
It’s a guide. It’s a network. It’s all things to all people. It’s Broadcast.com (www.broadcast.com) known as AudioNet until earlier this year. Radio is just a small part of this monolith, but that doesn’t mean the radio area is small. Some of the programming is original but Broadcast.com’s greatest strength might be the contracts that let it air live continuous broadcasts of more than 355 radio stations and networks, and sports programming covering more than 400 college and professional teams. Precursor Audionet became a friend the day the Stanford grad in my house couldn’t find a crucial basketball game on TV but could listen to it live on the student station via the then fledgling Internet network. This might be your best bet for finding talk shows, newscasts and live events. Plus: Lots of ways to search for stations. Drawback: A bewildering array of choices that might or might not lead you to the right place. There are far too many bad links for a commercial site of this scope. (star star star 1/2)
Numerous sites claim to be guides to on-line radio but BRS Web Radio (www.webradio.com) is one of the best organized. Produced by a San Francisco company with lots of fingers in the Internet radio pie, this site allows searches by format, call letters, state and country. It also provides listings for Internet-only stations, Web specials and radio on demand.
Check out the popout dashboardlike “tuner.” Pick a format, say “Adult Standards,” then choose an option from the stations listed on a pulldown menu and click on “tune in.” RealPlayer will open, if it isn’t open already, and the sound should start to flow.
Be prepared to pick a second or third choice in case you run into the dreaded error messages like the one that came up when I tried for “Tony Bennett” on NetRadio. Also, sometimes a message will pop up with a warning that a station only can be accessed by going through a different Web site. With that in mind the tuner offers a “Web site” option.
You also can use the BRS Radio Directory for links to radio stations with Web pages, a good way to check on program schedules, personality bios and other potentially useful info. (star star star)
RETRO RADIO
If your eyes turn green with envy when Richard Dreyfuss tracks down Wolfman Jack in “American Graffiti” type in www.reelradio.com as fast as you can: (star star star star)
Top 40 radio junkies and anyone who likes to have a good time will have a blast at Uncle Ricky’s Reel Top 40 Radio Repository (RT 40RR). Billed as “An Authentic Aircheck Museum of Classic Top 40” Radio, RT40RR exists because Richard “Uncle Ricky” Irwin, who jumped into radio as a deejay in 1965 when he was 14, wanted a way to beta test audio software. An Internet service provider who remembered Cousin Brucie offered server space free.
The result is a non-commercial virtual museum whose exhibits come from the collections of audio packrats who save and trade radio recordings.
Among the items:
– The History of Rock & Roll Time Sweep, 1977, a montage with the beginning of every Number One record from January 1956 through December 1977, in order.
– Plenty of Wolfman Jack, Alan Freed, Uncle Brucie and the rest of the rock radio legends (and some would-be legends).
– Chicago figures prominently on the site with airchecks of Larry Lujack and Dick Biondi in the Top 25. One Lujack session, pieced together like a flashback, tells the tale of the 1985 day Lujack wound up on the air for a second shift at WLS after Steve Dahl and Gary Meier walked out of the studio.
– The fun isn’t limited to music. The vintage commercials and the news items make for good listening, too. One of the funniest moments comes courtesy of the psuedo-newsies at WMGM in New York who, in the midst of French unrest in May 1958, announced that they had placed a call to Charles De Gaulle for an interview to be broadcast. Somehow they wound up on the phone with someone who sounded tres French, insisted on being interviewed live, but turned out to be a prankster from crosstown rival WINS.
