Listening to Internet Radio

Many real-world radio stations as well as Web-only stations broadcast over the Internet using a technology called streaming audio. Streaming audio is different from downloading an audio file. When you download a file, you can't start playing that file until it is completely downloaded to your PC. With streaming audio, however, playback can start before an entire file is downloaded. This also enables live broadcasts both of traditional radio stations and made-for-the-Web stations to be sent from the broadcast site to your PC.

Internet radio can be listened to with most music player programs. For example, Windows Media Player has a Radio Tuner tab that facilitates finding and listening to a variety of Internet radio stations. In addition, many Internet radio sites feature built-in streaming software or direct you to sites where you can download the appropriate music player software.

tip

Although you can listen to Internet radio over a traditional dial-up connection, you'll hear better quality sound over a broadband connection.

When you're looking for Internet radio broadcasts (of which there are thousands, daily), you need a good directory of available programming. Here's a list of sites that offer links to either traditional radio simulcasts or original Internet programming:

• LAUNCH (launch.yahoo.com)

• Live@ (www.live-at.com)

• Live365 (www.live365.com)

• Radio-Locator (www.radio-locator.com)

• RadioMOI (www.radiomoi.com)

• SHOUTcast (yp.shoutcast.com)

• Web-Radio (www.web-radio.com)

The Absolute Minimum

Here are the key points to remember from this chapter:

• You can download songs from iTunes Music Store, Napster, and other online music stores for just 99 cents apiece.

• Some Web sites offer free MP3 files from new and independent artists.

• You can also swap music files with other users, using a file-trading network such as KaZaA although trading copyrighted songs is both illegal and risky.

• You can use any audio player program such as Windows Media Player to play back digital audio files.

• If you prefer to listen to a stream of digital music, Internet radio is the way to go; hundreds of real-world and Web-only radio stations are broadcasting on the Internet.