Skip to Content

Free TUAW iPhone app -- try it now!
AOL Tech

internet-radio posts

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web

Last.fm launches adds videos, slideshows to music player

Last.fm music player
Last.fm has rolled out an updated version of its music player, which shows music videos for the songs you're listening to when available. And when they're not, it will show photo slideshows of the artist.

All told, the new Last.fm player gives you something to look at while you're listening to music, which is probably little more than an attempt to get you to stick around on the web page instead of opening the music player in a browser tab and then tucking it away in the background while you go and do something else. It's a lot easier to rake in the advertising dollars if you can get people to, you know, look at your web page.

The slideshow pictures come from related images uploaded by Last.fm members.

Even if you don't care about visuals, there's another reason you might want to check out the new Last.fm music player. You can now create instant radio stations by entering the names of up to three different artists instead of just one.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

Stream and record 12,000 stations with Radio Sure


Services like Last.fm might have a little advantage over regular streaming internet radio when it comes to cool factor, but it never hurts to have one more way to listen to and discover new music.

Radio Sure
is a free application for Windows that allows you to turn in to (and record) more than 12,000 streams. It's very similar to Screamer, though I had more success getting stations to play on Radio Sure. Each station is tagged with its country of origin, primary language, and genre for convenient sorting. I'd like to see the genres handled a bit differently - for example, Punk instead of Rock - Punk and to be able to filter the listings. The interface is a little much for me, but it's not quite Fugly Friday material.

Those minor shortcomings aside, Radio Sure keeps things simple and just plain works. You can record any stream to MP3 in bitrates up to 256k and maintain a list of your favorites for fast tuning. Tracks can be auto-split, and the program will even skip recording tracks you've previously saved.

It's available both with an installer and as a portable version, and runs on Windows PCs.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web

Pandora internet radio adds lyrics... for some songs

Pandora Lyrics
Internet radio stations Pandora and Last.fm have been in the news a lot over the last year for removing features - like the ability for users in most of the world to listen to free music streams. So it's nice to see Pandora launch a raft of new features, even if they're only available to users in the US.

At the top of the list of new features is support for lyrics. Pandora has partnered with Gracenote to provide lyrics for some songs. To see if lyrics are available, click the "About This Music" tab and then select lyrics. You'll see the first few lines and a link to click for the full set of lyrics, which will open in another browser window.

Honestly, I tried listening to about a dozen songs this morning and Pandora only managed to find lyrics for two. So this feature is clearly still a work in progress. But it definitely shows promise.

Pandora has also added a new "gift" option that lets you create a custom station by selecting up to 5 artists and songs and sending it to a friend with a message. It's sort of like a somewhat randomized mix-tape.

Filed under: Audio, Internet

Last.fm postpones international fees

Last.fm
Internet radio service Last.fm is holding off on a plan to begin charging customers outside of the US, UK, and Germany a monthly fee to access streaming music. The move has received a fair amount of criticism, primarily from users who don't want to shell out 3 Euros a month to pay for the service.

In a blog post today, the company explains that it hasn't been able to make enough money from advertising in each country where the service is offered to support the service. Last.fm is holding off on charging subscription fees until it makes a few changes including the ability for users to purchase gift subscriptions for friends and pay for transactions using services other than Paypal.

[via Mashable]

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware

Icy Radio streams, records hundreds of 'net radio stations

Back in August I wrote about Screamer, a nice portable streaming radio app. KSoft's Icy Radio offers a similar experience with a couple of nice additions.

Icy Radio is completely portable - just download the zip archive and extract it to a folder. Apart from a large library of audio streams, Icy Radio includes several nice skins and streaming video support.

As with Screamer, you should expect some of the included streams not to work. After all, many of these feeds come from ad-supported sites and their owners probably aren't so keen on the idea of us listening to their music without having to view their banners.

The massive channel list is fully searchable and indexed by genre - more than 60 of them. Adding new stations is easy, and can be done one-at-a-time or in bulk from an XML file. Icy Radio's tabbed main window also sports a favorites list for your top channels and maintains a history of your recordings for easy playback.

Built-in recording supports MP3 and OGG (you'll need to download and unzip the plugin into your Icy Radio folder first). Unfortunately, video streams can't be recorded as of version 0.5.

Icy Radio is freeware for Windows only.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware

FlyCast mobile radio app comes to the PC

FlyCast
Over the last year we've seen a lot of companies race to come out with iPhone-specific versions of their applications. But FlyCast is moving in the other direction. The company makes a mobile application for iPhone and BlackBerry users which provides easy access to hundreds of internet audio streams including music, news, entertainment, and tech podcasts. Now FlyCast also has a desktop client based on Adobe AIR, which means it can run on Mac, Windows, and Linux computers.

The FlyCast Desktop Player appears to be a direct port of the iPhone software. It would have been nice if the company had spent a few minutes coming up with a new design so that you didn't feel like you were playing with an iPod while flipping channels. But the application works as you'd expect, making it easy to find internet audio streams in a number of different categories.

[via Zatz Not Funny]

Filed under: Audio, Internet

Internet Radio is (almost) saved?

last.fm playerRemember how last year there was a big to do about the future of internet radio? The US Copyright Royalty Board imposed new, higher fees for online broadcasters, and web radio services like Pandora and Last.fm complained that the new fees would effectively put them out of business. A bill was introduced in Congress to work things out, but that never really went anywhere. But now, a year and a half later, the Digital Media Association, which represents a number of online music distributors, announced an agreement with copyright holders. It just doesn't exactly cover internet radio.

Here's the deal. If you're a company that provides limited music downloads or interactive streaming audio, you have to pay 10.5% of your revenue in royalties, less any amount owed for performance royalties. That covers subscription based services like Rhapsody which let you download music to your PC, so long as the music becomes useless when you stop paying up. It also covers interactive sites like Last.fm which let you select the songs you want to play.

What it doesn't cover are internet radio sites like Pandora or Radio Paradise which provide a stream of music for you selected by a human being (not yourself) or a computer algorithm. No agreement has been reached yet to cover these services.

The good news is that if the parties involved were able to work out a reasonable deal for certain types of online music services, there's hope that Pandora and other online radio companies can be saved... eventually.

[via Techmeme]

Filed under: Audio, Internet, AOL

AOL Radio: Now with CBS

AOL Radio
AOL has relaunched AOL Radio, with live streams from 140 CBS-owned radio stations from around the country in addition to hundreds of web-only channels. That includes a handful of talk radio stations and dozens of music stations. But more importantly, the CBS deal could help AOL bring in local advertising deals, which could be a vital component in making AOL Radio profitable.

The New York Times reports that Arbitron rating show that AOL Radio has a larger weekly audience than any other web radio service. But the cost of providing the bandwidth for radio streams and paying royalties for the rights to stream the music is high, and the company has yet to turn a profit from its online radio efforts.

The deal with CBS replaces a similar partnership AOL had with XM Satellite Radio.

The new AOL Radio Player also features support for Safari, preset buttons and support for pausing radio streams and skipping some songs.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Record and save online radio streams with Chilirec

Chilirec
We've seen desktop applications that let you record music from internet radio streams. But ChiliRec is the first web app we've seen that rips music from online radio stations and stores it in folders.

Here's how it works. When you visit the Chilirec site, you can choose from a long list of online radio streams. By default, every single stream is selected, but you can uncheck the boxes next to any stations you don't want to record. Once you've selected your streams, ChiliRec will rip the songs from each station and store them online. You can access them from a list of recordings, play them with a Flash-based media player, or create and save playlists. You can also save files as MP3s to your desktop. Keep in mind, audio recorded from an internet stream may not sound as good as a track purchased from iTunes or other stores, and sometimes the beginning or end of the song may be cut off.

ChiliRec does not let users add their own radio streams. We have a feeling the service is constantly recording each of the streams in its directory, and when you sign up for an account it simply gives you access to the stored recordings starting at the moment you hit record. That would use up a lot less bandwidth and storage space than actually creating separate recordings for each user.

[via Go2Web20]

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware

Download Internet radio tracks with Free Music Zilla

Free Music Zilla
There's no shortage of applications that let you save audio streams from internet services ranging from Shoutcast to Pandora. And well, Free Music Zilla is another one of those applications.

What sets Free Music Zilla apart from some of the competitors in this space is that it's 100% free, and incredibly easy to use. Just install the application and it will hang out in your system tray. When you visit a site with streaming audio like Pandora, Last.fm, IMEEM, MySpace, eSnips, or several others, Free Music Zilla will give you the option of saving each song.

While the program officially works with all the web services mentioned above plus a few more, we've found that it also does a pretty good job of catching songs from unsupported web sites like the recently launched MeeMix.

The only thing that would make Free Music Zilla better would be automatic file naming. Right now, any track you download will have a string of numbers for a name, so you'll have to tag and name files on your own. Of course, we don't have to tell you that in many situations, using programs like this to download streaming audio may be illegal. But we can also think of plenty of instances when you might want to use a program like Free Music Zilla to download public domain music or songs licensed under Creative Commons.

[via TechCrunch]

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio