BEST RADIO FOR FREE ON INTERNET

5 Suffering cabin fever? Need an escape? Internet radio can fling open the doors.IINA is arguably one of the best music apps for Mac in recent years. Radiologik - Radio Automation Software for Mac Audio Hijack - Paid virtual audio router and Mac encoder (18)Listen to BBC Radio 1, home of the Official Chart, the Live Lounge and the worlds greatest DJs including Nick Grimshaw, Scott Mills, Fearne Cotton, Greg James, Zane Lowe, Annie Mac and many more. Mixxx V2.1.3 - Comes with an inbuilt encoder (3) LadioCast - Free Mac encoder (17) BUTT - Free Mac encoder (15) Paid Radio Broadcasting software for Mac. Free Radio Broadcasting software for Mac.

Mentioned in this articleThe Great American Songbook station, based in the Netherlands, is a perfect example. Better still, most of these stations are free of commercials, thanks to government and listener funding, college backing, or private endowment by the creator. PaulInRio.com streams from RioВ de Janeiro, Brazil.Even the most esoteric of musical (and informational) tastesвЂ”from Bollywood to SchlagerвЂ”are served by the dozens on internet radio: Digital audio services you call up on any web-connected speaker, computer, or smartphone. Jonathan Takiff / IDGInternet radio lets you hear musical styles from where they were born. More into the Paris cafГ© scene? An atmospheric soundtrack of cool-school and Django-ing gypsy jazz is just a tap (and snifter of cognac) away on the cityвЂ™s sublime TSF Jazz and FIPS autour du Jazz outlets. And BBC Radio 6 is great for pulling out punchy rock club concerts from its archives.

TuneIn Radio comes pre-installed or is loadable on more than 200 connected devices, including smart speakers from the likes of Sonos and Bose, smart TVs, streaming media players (e.g., Roku and Amazon Fire TV), smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles (Xbox and PlayStation), and personal computers.With a global database of more than 100,000 stations in 197 countries and 22 languages, plus 5.7 million podcasts and on-demand show offerings, TuneIn comes closest to world radio completeness (and domination). You can use its service on the web or with an Android or iOS app, but an ad-free experience costs $9.99 per month.First among many, and first in my heart, is TuneIn Radio, the 800-pound gorilla of internet radio station aggregators. Michael Brown / IDGTuneIn Radio is the 800-pound gorilla of internet radio aggregators. How to tune in to internet radioIf you know a stationвЂ™s call letters or name, itвЂ™s a snap to haul in a specific internet radio station on a computer or smart deviceвЂ”just type it in or speak to a smart speaker like an Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Apple HomePod.For deep-sea fishing in the great unknown, though, it pays to go through a radio station aggregator: An online database of curated links to radio stations searchable by location, genre, popularity, andвЂ”sometimesвЂ”stream quality. To these ears, the stationвЂ™s content rivals that of pay-radio SiriusXMвЂ™s Siriusly Sinatra channel, but as with all internet radio streams, both live and on-demand, the price of admission to The Great American Songbook is free.

Best Radio For Free On Internet

Jonathan Takiff / iDGVTunerвЂ™s stripped-down but content rich app lets you dig for gold by genre, location, language, fastest speed, lowest speed and popularity.Veteran internet radio aggregator VTuner does have a database that rivals TuneIn. But the service doesnвЂ™t have nearly the global reach or stylistic diversity of TuneIn or other hard-striving streaming radio promoters. Aiming to become a one-stop destination (and sell more advertising), iHeartRadio also serves up mass appeal playlists and personalized music stations (a la Pandora) has distribution deals with commercial radio chains in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and also links listeners to some non-aligned stations. To access those, you need to tap into the iHeartRadio app and portal, likewise accessible for free on internet radios, smartphones, tablets, computers, and similar connected devices. Markets owned by iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel Communications).

WhatвЂ™s #1 on their Country station roundup? Prague-based Country Radio, featuring Czech-language singing cowboys. Mentioned in this articleWant to be led by the hand to вЂњthe most popularвЂќ local stations in a music, information or sports radio category? The on-screen guide for MediaU (also based in Germany) offers user-friendly graphics and a sophisticated batch of Euro-centric picks. The VTuner platform powers several lines of smart speakers and A/V receivers, though in recent years it has lost significant market share to Airable, a rival based in Germany. I also appreciate that this app lets a user search through its inventory by the sonic quality of signal (more on that momentarily). Literally hundreds of world stations presenting in a particular category are accessible with a single tap on VTunerвЂ™s barebones, but functional website.

Jonathan Takiff / IDGRadio.Garden lets you choose from internet radio stations based on their geographic location by clicking dots on a global satellite-photo map.Now tap Search and the gardener provides immediate access to radio outlets by country, city or call letters, plus bouquets of вЂњOur Favorite Stations,вЂќ playfully categorized as Independent Stations, Energetic Rhythms (electronic, dance), Time Travel (content from decades gone by), Weird Frequencies (like Theatre Organ Radio and Birdsong Radio), and Ends of the Earth (self-explanatory). Tap a location dot and up pops selected picks from the immediate area and nation. (But the site was characterized as вЂњnot secureвЂќ and needing third-party software intercession before I could load it on my iMac.) Open this thing up on a screen and youвЂ™re presented an animated map of the world. This highly engaging, super-fast search tool can be easily planted on a smartphone or tablet via an iOS or Android app. The top picks there are Classic Rock Florida HD, Smooth Jazz Florida, and Modern Jukebox Radio.Radio.Garden is the most playful and eccentric aggregator of all. And I found some interesting, net-only stations on Internet-radio.com , although the entries on its вЂњFeaturedвЂќ list suggest paid-for positioning.

And when necessary, the shows can be turned on a dime. Como AudioComo AudioвЂ™s elegant Musica offers an excellent means of accessing the rich content available on internet radio.But the quirkiness of the selections, the themes laid out in the segues indicate the presence of a human being, not an algorithm, making the aesthetic calls and structuring the playlist. (ThatвЂ™s where song-identifying services like Shazam come in handy.) And hours or even days of programming might be scheduled in advance on the studioвЂ™s servers. You might not hear a DJвЂ™s voice or even see a meta-data screen tag identifying the artists and tracks on a station like KCRW-Eclectic24. The eerie, otherworldly strains make me feel like IвЂ™m living in a very strange movie.To my mind, true internet radio stations are independent, curated, and free theyвЂ™re not corporate, computerized, and costly.

Even technically and financially strapped stations in third-world countries are serving up MP3 content encoded at 48-, 56-, and 64Kbps, or else working with the more efficient AAC codec at bit rates of 32- or 48Kbps, typically with a sampling rate of 44.1kHz. ThinkstockIf this is what you picture when you hear вЂњinternet radio,вЂќ itвЂ™s been much too long since you listened to an internet radio station.The story is different today, judging from VTunerвЂ™s posted transmission rates (information users can also call up on Como Audio radio displays). The lossy digital compression schemes deployed in mid-1990s streaming audio players like RealAudio and Nullsoft were crude and extreme, with low bit rates chopping off each songвЂ™s head, tail, and feet to squeeze it through the modest data pipe available to private internet users at the time.Even into the early 2000s, it was common to find вЂњperceptual codedвЂќ MP3 streams running at rates as low as 16KbpsвЂ”buying into the psycho-acoustic theory that louder sounds obscure quieter ones, so why bother to shove all that вЂњextraвЂќ data down the pipe? MP3 freaked the hell out of discerning musicians like Neil Young, who knew what was being lost in translation. Internet radio sound quality Mentioned in this articleInternet radio used to get a deserved rap for sound quality вЂњapproaching AM quality.вЂќ No longer.

Best Radio For Mac