So my beloved XM protable has been box-napped by the lovely Lady Chance for her home office. And in the bowels of my new office building I couldn’t get a decent signal anyway.
And the terrestrial stations in this area are…lacking…to say the least.
That leaves me with Internet radio. I’ll take suggestions for any and all.
My own musical interests run towards
Alternative
Folk
Old Rock and Roll
and I’m assuming I can get NPR’s feed from their site if I’d like.
So who’s gonna help a man out, here?
A friend has access to Live 365 which seems good but I have no broadband so I have nothing. My friend has found stations that play nothing but what he likes.
I’ve been quite impressed by Gaydar radio (we listen via satellite but pretty sure it’s broadcast over the net)
Don’t think it’s mandatory to be gay to listen…
I listen to launch.com all the time. Commercial-free access is $36/year.
Launch.com is excellent – it tailors the music to your preferences and has a great library. The free version has only a handful of commercial breaks.
Also, there are a few good feeds on the iTunes player.
“WUMB is the country’s foremost radio station for folk and acoustic music, airing a mix of folk music twenty-four hours weekdays including singer-songwriter, blues, Celtic, bluegrass and more. Weekends, the station is a leading cultural center for traditional folk and Celtic music, as well as blues, afropop and world music.” Listen live links. WUMB is a community service of the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Spinner.com has a player that’s worth checking out.
I recently found a radio station in Australia that has an incredible music mix. Willie Nelson, The Beatles, Marvin Hamlisch, Stevie Wonder, just to name a few. I can’t seem to find how to get their Internet feed at their website but you can get it via radio-locator.com. Click the lightning bolt icon next to 4BH.
I can’t believe I’m gonna beat lissener to this: KEXP is an excellent independent alternative music station based in Seattle. They stream live to the web.
I listen to Iceberg Radio.
There are a wide variety of music genres and subgenres. My current favorite is GenEcstasy, which plays a lot of Cure, Clash, Ramones, Stranglers, etc.
I listen to Virgin Radio - it comes up with a 128 kbps bitrate in the iTunes Radio library. They’ve got a great selection of music, plus you get news and funny British radio “adverts”!
Oink …although not free anymore
anetstation from Antartica.
I’ve listen to some pretty cool music from all over the world. No talk. No commericals. Just great music.
A local Chicago station, WXRT (“Chicago’s Finest Rock”), has just gone streaming. The details are here http://www.wxrt.com/.
I listened at lunch in my car, and here’s what I remember them playing:
Steely Dan
Beatles
B.B. King
a new Irish band (The Thrills?)
that Woody Guthrie/Billy Bragg/Wilco collaboration
The Who (the new tune)
Garbage
I haven’t listened online, as it’s seriously frowned upon at work. I think you may need to fdownload some AOL applicationor something. but it is truly a great station.
For true oddball programming, I’d recommed Radio FIP, a French station that is prepared to play just about anything, in any order.
http://www.shoutcast.com
Plays through WinAmp. Plenty of music styles to choose from with few (if any) commercial breaks.
I have Sirius radio in my car and home. They offer 99% of their streams over the internet for subscribers. Maybe XM offers this option?
My favorite free station for streaming audio is WNCW broadcasting from Western NC - it’s a public radio station with a pretty eclectic mix of good stuff. They have a playlist on the site you can check out to see if they play the kind of stuff you’re into.
I also subscribe to MusicMatch, which I absolutely love. I can listen to pretty much whatever I want at any time of day, and I can create my own stations, too. I just happen to be listening to Elvin Jones right now because I might hear the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine at Yoshi’s in a couple weeks.
You said you were interested in folk. I’m not sure if Hawaiian music counts, but for the past year and a half or so, we’ve been listening to Internet Radio Hawaii, or IRH-Live!.
They play a mix of “classic” Hawaiian songs (my favorite), modern stuff, clips from Hawaiian comedians, and even the occasional hula chant. It’s a wonderful taste of modern Hawaiian culture.
My father is from Hawaii, and I grew up listening to this kind of thing. Ah, the soundtrack of my childhood…