Everyone has used the radio at one point in their lives. The moment you sit in a car, you’re reaching for the radio dials and finding your favorite station. But for some of us who work jobs very far away from our home towns (like myself for some time) or even radio aficionados, that station is just not available on the local dial. That station has to be found through the Internet.

Internet radio began in the early 1990s in Read more!

Streaming media is one of the true wonders of the internet. As high speed internet has become more common services that stream either radio, television or other media have flourished. Streaming media allows you to enjoy internet media without using up valuable space on your computer. But how does it work?

Here’s a basic overview of how streaming media works. When you connect to an internet radio station or start streaming a movie the first thing your computer does is set up a Read more!

Internet radio is simply a great thing for music lovers. These services will let you tailor the music to your liking, and remember your choices for the next time you log in.
Advertising keeps the free portion of these services alive. But if you opt in for a paid subscription you can get a better overall experience.
Pandora is one of best liked internet radio services. There is a huge selection of music available with regular audio ads running between songs on a set schedule. The artist or genre or song type is matched by to Read more!

Internet radio is widely available today, and with the strong adoption of 3g and 4g cell phones, the future is bright. There are also applications available to let you use internet radio at home or in the car, without a computer.
The best free internet radio services around today include:
Pandora. This is a site that has been around for a number of years now. It offers both free and paid subscriptions. The free service is accompanied Read more!

Internet radio is a method of audio transmission that is similar to conventional radio. Unlike the traditional radio signal, Internet radio is broadcast instantly to computers or other electronic devices by way of the Internet.

There are different categories of Internet radio which include standard regular FM/AM radio, music suggestion, or a radio network soley for the Internet; streaming technology is used for all of these. When an audio or video signal is streamed it is constantly being acquired by a user in a signal. Streaming media is built-in to a form Read more!

I recently had to relocate from the San Francisco Bay Area to Charlotte, and although it was a hard move because I’d be leaving such an incredibly diverse region of the country, one of the most difficult things to leave behind was my favorite Bay Area radio station. Not only did they play incredible tunes that were quite frequently cutting edge and avant-garde, but just listing to the dj’s provided a cool SF vibe that’s hard to come by. Fortunately the radio station is owned by Cumulus which owns a total portfolio of 350 stations nationwide (ranging from Abilene to Youngstown) and they stream their broadcasts live via the internet. What that means is that I can be sitting in my living room in Charlotte while I listen to the pulse of the Bay Area and feel like I’m still right there in the thick of things. In fact, I recently went back to SF for 10 days of fun, and it was by listening to my station via Cumulus before leaving that I was able to tap into which concerts and live music venues I was going to put on my itinerary while planning visits with friends from the area. While my Bay Area station is a classic rock format, Cumulus covers them all from country to sports talk and everything in between. So, if you’re ever feeling house-bound and want to take a trip to another city without leaving the comfort of your own home, why not take a trip via Cumulus and get put right in the center of a city’s music and news scene.

Whether you’re blasting top 40 hits in your dorm room or listening to a smooth jazz station in your headphones at work, the Internet is becoming an increasingly popular medium for listening to tunes. Over the last few years, there has been a shift towards user-selected internet radio. The concept of these sites is to give you a reprieve from having to listen to songs on a generic station, half of which you probably don’t even enjoy. More specialized and specific stations cater to personal tastes and are a great way to introduce new artists with music similar to your favorite songs.Slacker Personal Radio: A free account on this site allows you to either create your own Read more!

Just as we’ve all come to love Internet radio and struggle to imagine music before this came to be, a recent legislative decision could jeopardize the entire system. Traditionally, as payment for streaming music, Internet radio webcasters were required to pay an annual fee along with a certain percentage of profits. However, performers who are suffering from lost revenues have been pushing hard for a pay per performance fee. Before the change in legislation, money was paid to songwriters and performers received royalties, but rough times in the recording business are causing a push for this new system. What recording artists seem to forget is that it’s illegal downloads that are causing their wallets to shrink, not legal, license-holding radio stations. In fact, we’ve all seen better days. The new fee system requires a flat fee per song that is played. However, since this change in 2007, the rate has gone up every year. Read more!

One of the biggest appeals of Internet radio is that you get a chance to hear different genres and songs that would never be played on a mainstream FM station. Most music played on traditional radio stations is work done by a well-known recording artist, and getting your music heard on one of these stations can be nearly impossible. Conversely, online stations are much more receptive to new artists and this is a great starting point if you’re trying to give your music career the push it needs.Each site has a different policy for accepting new music, but it is almost always easier that what you can expect from a terrestrial radio station. On AM and FM radio, it is illegal for broadcasters to accept money from an artist or recording company to have their music played on the station. However, this regulation has not yet been extended to Internet radio. Read more!