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 by 10 to 15 second ads that run every so often, but still much less than on any commercial standard radio station.
Pandora will let the user select an artist a genre or a song title, the music will be played and then similar music will come up automatically and play. The user has the option of selecting approval or not for the songs, and Pandora will shape what comes up afterwards to tweak the sounds it presents for you. You can easily learn about the artists or songs, and will find new ones that you may never have heard before.
Last.fm is a free internet radio service based in London, England with an easy to navigate home page. The genres of music are presented along the left side, and currently popular selections that others are listening to are displayed in the middle of the page. Select a musical style or artist and the station will play. Last.fm offers similar music for you to choose if you like.
There are many other choices in free internet radio services, but these two are at the top.