Internet radio has already been covered many times over the past two months on Tech2, so why are we carrying this feature? Well, for the benefit of those who came in late, Internet radio has been in existence for quite some time now and provides free (sometimes not) music online. Conceptually, it works the same way as traditional radio, only the service is broadcast through the Internet.
With something so ingenious, it was only a matter of time before it became a booming industry. Now you have channels broadcasting audio content 24x7 across the globe and across all genres. This field is so vast that talking about it can take pages, so what we've tried to do is list some famous services, together with some of our favorites. This is not a definitive collection, but a representative sampling for the uninitiated.
If you like this and want to add more, you can visit our forum and simply start a new thread.
Shoutcast
Shoutcast is has been supported by Winamp for ages now, and has the largest list of channels. At any time you have over 20,000 listeners, with over 18,000 servers running live. From Alternative, Jazz, Funk, Rock, R&B, World to Soul, Electronic and plenty more, Shoutcast has everything you would want to listen to.
Shoutcast comes integrated into Winamp’s media library with a list of channels, and you need only to click twice to start listening. For a broader range, you can directly access the website and look up anything you feel is interesting.
The best thing is that the radio stations are hosted by local artists, music aficionados; basically people like you and me. So this allows you to listen to a lot non-commercial music that don’t often make it to the popular radio stations.
You also select the channels or genres based on bitrate. So if you have slow connection you can tune into something that offers 64 Kbps. Obviously this affects the quality of music, so generally 128 kbps and above will always be more enjoyable. If you like anything on Shoutcast, you can rip the audio content and save it on your hard disk. You can learn how to do that here.




