Internet Radio — What All Is Out There For You

Not only music, these radios are information powerhouses

No longer does the mention of a Radio conjure up a picture of a junky old box with rickety dials, capable of less than a handful of stations, each playing monotonous tracks in a loop.

The Radio has come a long way since the ’80s — streaming seamlessly from your desk, your car, your phones, even your iPods.

Somehow, the Radio has survived the ages and technology, despite sticking with its staple “uncontrollable” nature (where you’re largely a passive listener with no say in the playlist). That said, the Digital Age, did enforce some changes in the platform though. It changed the functioning, it changed how we experience the radio, how we interact with it, and how much control we have over it.

The Internet Radio as its come to be called, did shrug off it’s boring avatar somewhat.

Pandora, Spotify and the very new iTunes Radio (available on accounts registered in select countries only) are some of the prominent Internet Radio services available at this time. India’s very own Gaana and Saavn are stellar examples that Radio done well still sells in India too, despite torrent sites and cheap CDs sold surreptitiously at corners.

Let us first get your feet wet with the concept of Internet Radio.

Internet radio (also known as Web Radio, eRadio or Online Radio) works off your Internet connection and not via the signals from a transmitter like FM or DAB — hence it is not affected by weather conditions and has a better sound quality (being digital and all).

Some Internet Radios are associated with their parent “terrestrial radio stations”, while the new entrants come in alone and act in the traditional aggregator form.

The biggest benefit the Internet Radio has, is their reach — traditional radios stations could not be heard if you traveled across geographies… you could catch their sister concern in the new location (a la BBC Radio which was a global brand with a local presence), it would be adapted to the culture of the new geography, thus might not give you the seamless continuity you may desire.
Internet Radios on the other hand are streamed in from an indeterminate location anywhere in the world that has access to internet and electricity (and other such paraphernelia necessary for stable outward transmissions) and be received unchanged across the globe.

Another evident benefit is the plethora of choices one has via Internet Radio — a lot more stations, each station with many more genres, artists and content for you to choose from.

I particularly like genres like “ambient music” playing in the background while I work and have Rock, Dance or Trance tracks to listen to when on the move.

Having learnt from Apple’s Podcasts, the Internet Radio too, has moved past just playing Music. Now, most of them broadcast news, comedy, interviews, panel discussions and even education, as their basket of tricks. Given half a chance, they will spoil you for choice.

The Internet Radio does not come without its limitations though — the biggest one being your Internet connection speed. The faster your internet connection, the better your experience; if you are on a slower connection and are listening to uncompressed music being streamed (high music quality may be at 128 kbps or higher), you may experience interruptions when the music stream is broken and it needs to buffer. And there’re not many things more irritating than a stuttering audio track, believe me!

Another important aspect to consider is the consumption of Data on your mobile plan. Vodafone’s website has listed an approximation of 15 MB of Data for 10 minutes of radio listening via an app. This is a huge bummer for people on limited data plans, but fear not; switch to free WIFI when near a source (home, office, malls, airports, etc.) and you can enjoy your music to your heart’s content.
Another way around that you could explore: Some stations stream the audio at 24 kbps and some at 32 kbps and some at 128 kbps; use the one with the lower stream rate for lower consumption of data.

Music, in our lives, has come to a juncture where we can’t be separated from it. We need it to ease stress, relax, entertain us or any other excuse we might use to plug in our headphones. With time, our horizons have expanded and people have become much more open to discovering new artists, genres or tracks according to how one is feeling at the time. The Internet Radio offers all of the above.

Social Media Sharing is at its peak too, and that further enhances the popularity of listening to music online — making it easier to discover, enjoy, share and learn bios of artists previously unheard of.

So, what are the Apps for Internet Radio?

A plethora of Internet Radio applications are available on almost every mobile operating system. Here are some of the top Internet Radio services available on the Play Store/App Store

TuneIn Radio: Lets you listen in on more than 70,000 AM/FM and Internet stations, plus 2 million on-demand programs from around the globe. The paid version offers DVR like recording capabilities which makes it one of the best music streaming service available.

iHeart Radio — iHeart is more of a mix of Pandora and TuneIn. Offering more than 1,500 stations and a library consisting of more than 15 million songs and 400,000 artists. It is capable of taking your preferences into consideration and generating a playlist you would enjoy.

Pandora: The most famous and one of the biggest contributors towards the growth of Internet Radio. The new updated version brings a better and smoother interface and it’s scarily good at getting to know your music taste based on track up votes or down votes. A great online streaming service on the verge of decline as this service has recently been losing listeners. Pandora is not available to those outside of the US, Australia and New Zealand… unless you know how to trick it into believing that you are in the US.

Spotify: The service has more than 10 million users. One of the biggest reasons for its success is that it allows users to integrate their Facebook or Twitter accounts into the Spotify service, thereby allowing them to share or access their friends’ playlists. This Radio service that has served listeners well to curb their hunger for music, videos and podcasts.

8 Tracks: Comparatively new to the game, 8 Tracks is my current personal favourite. You can tap on the kind of mood(s) you are in, or what you are doing and get hand crafted music accordingly. Interesting options being chilling, smoking or sex [no kidding]. It’s not as popular as Pandora, TuneIn or Spotify, yet… but the word is spreading steadily. Its vision is to provide users with a unique blend of word-of-mouth sharing and radio programming on a global scale. For all those who have grown bored of the regular options, it is worth a shot.

Chatting around, I realize that many people just use these services to listen to their old favorites; at the same time, others use Internet Radio services to listen to music according to their mood.

The concept of tracks or videos going viral across the globe would have been alien had it not been for Internet Radio. So it’s safe to say that the Internet Radio is a convenient way of delivering music and more.

Numbers show that the people who listen to music through such services will soon surpass the number of people who listen to AM/FM broadcast radio.

People are adapting to change or should I say they are welcoming it? I’ll leave that for you to decide!

Originally published at Chip-Monks.