Streaming Internet Music

With the advent of larger Internet connections and many users now owning broadband connections we are starting to see home music players that can stream MP3 music straight over your Internet connection as an Internet Radio Stream (Phillips Players). For those of you who do not have one of these streaming Internet players it is possible to listen to the music from your computer with such programs and WinAMP (for windows) or iTunes (windows and mac). iTunes has a number of Internet Radio Stations already defined in the program but there are also a number of websites that contain a list of radio stations. The two largest MP3 Internet Radio stream sites are SHOUTcast and Live365.com. These two sites allow you to browse or search through a VERY large list of Internet Radio streams to find what you are interested in. Live365.com is a commercial site that wishes you to pay for advert free radio streams, however you can still listen to the streams for free and it is the same as listening to normal FM commercial radio. The extra feature that Live365.com has is that it pops up a window in your browser that displays the current song and the past 2 songs.

You may have noticed that I qualify that these streams are MP3 streams, as you can also find Internet Radio streams that use other audio formats. IceCast is a site containing software to create your own Internet Radio stream. IceCast can stream any audio format that it understands which includes OGGVorbis (for more information about OGGVorbis go here) and MP3. The IceCast stream list therefore displays Internet Radio Streams that are either using the MP3 or OGGVorbis formats.

Yes I know that there are other sites out there that offer Internet radio streams but I believe that these are the best and will keep you amused for hours. Happy listening.

Links
NullSoft SHOUTcast
Live 365.com
IceCast Stream List
Vorbis Website
Phillips Broadband Internet Audio Players