Listening to Radio

Many people enjoy music while they work. Or other sounds. You can play CDs, as described earlier in this chapter. Or you can listen to the radio on your computer, via Internet Radio. Thousands of Internet radio stations are available. Some require Windows Media Player, but not all. Many broadcasts are in MP3 format that can be played by your audio player that has MP3 support or a multimedia player, discussed earlier in this chapter in the section "Downloading Music."

Many broadcasts originate from radio stations that make their programs available live on the Internet. If you have a favorite station, check their Web site to see whether they are available on the Internet. A radio-locator Web site is available (www.radio-locator.com) where you can search for radio stations. Then, check their Web sites to see whether they offer Internet radio. In addition, many radio broadcasts are initiated by Internet broadcasters. The broadcast is available only on the Internet, with no "real" radio station.

You can listen to radio stations through the browser, as long as the browser can play the sound file format. Or you can use an audio or multimedia player to access radio stations. Some players allow you to set up radio station URLs so you can play them through the player, rather than the browser. For instance, Rhythmbox, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player allow you to set up radio stations.

Some Web sites provide access to many radio stations. For instance, Shoutcast (www.shoutcast.com) offers thousands of Internet radio broadcasts. You can search the stations by name, song, artist, or genre. When you find a station you want to listen to, click the Tune In button. Shoutcast also allows you to set preferences for which media player to use. Another site is www.live-radio.net, which provides only real radio stations from many countries. You can listen to an African radio station live if you so desire. However, you must put up with a lot of ads. There's no shortage of radio stations. Googling for Internet radio results in millions of hits.

When playing radio stations through the Mozilla browser, it may recognize the format and play without a problem, perhaps using plug-ins you installed. In some cases, Mozilla doesn't recognize the file format and displays the window in Figure 16-4.

Figure 16-4. Mozilla file type prompt window.

You can select either the first or second options. The first option shows realplay as the default application, so you could choose that option. The second choice allows you to specify which application to use with the file. You can browse to find the application, if necessary. In this case, the default application is specified, so the first option should be chosen instead. You could probably have typed /usr/bin/xmms as the application to Open With.

Notice the check box at the bottom of the screen. When you check this option, Mozilla will remember how to handle audio/x-scpls type files and handle them in the future without displaying this window.