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Highlights:
Introduction
Analysis
Radio Web Sites
Streaming Radio: Behind the Bits

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Radio Web Sites
By William Van Winkle, PC Magazine
May 12, 2001

AllDanzRadio

Featuring 31 genres with three preset, in-house stations each, AllDanzRadio doesn't have the Web's most comprehensive music selection, but the broadcasts are virtually commercial-free. Station DJs serve up decent selections, but unfortunately the sound quality tends to be hit-or-miss.

Even with a T1 connection, the broadcast sounded muffled, and our 56K connection was plagued by songs that skipped and ended prematurely. Moreover, when you click on a station, it always begins streaming from the beginning of its playlist, forcing us to listen to the same tracks over and over.

At AllDanzRadio, you can't skip ahead to the next song, rate music, or interact with other users. But you can buy music and music-related gear, leaving us with the impression that AllDanzRadio is a passable radio site trying to be just good enough to sell merchandise.

AllDanzRadio, Company Info; www.alldanzradio.com; Rating: 2


Echo

Fun and flexible, Echo is everything a radio site should be. After a quick registration, you can create your own station in four simple steps. Genre and subgenre options are comprehensive without being overpowering, and you can make your station available to all Echo visitors or just to those you invite.


Enlarge image

As songs appear on the Echo player applet, you can rate the artist, song, and album. The site responds by refining your station to reflect your ratings. We heard a lot of great music we hadn't heard before, and Echo's ability to play music similar to tracks and bands we rated highly was more accurate than that of any other site.

Extra features include song skipping and frequent-listener rewards. Songs load quickly, and sound quality was excellent--even on a 56K line. This is the one we'll stick with.

Echo Networks, Company Info; www.echo.com; Rating: 5


LaunchCast

Rather than having you choose certain genres, LaunchCast begins the customization process by asking you to check off performers you enjoy from a lengthy list. Based on your subsequent ratings of songs, albums, and artists, your personal station will include tracks recommended by fans of your favorite groups. Like Echo, LaunchCast has a handy song-skip button.

The Internet Radio is only one area within LaunchCast's portal; there are also music videos, news, downloads, and more. Unfortunately, this useful content and its attendant advertising slows page loads, which in turn causes frequent player hiccups on a narrowband connection. LaunchCast's content is great, and its player is feature-rich. But extras such as community sharing are limited compared with Echo's or sonicnet.com's.

Launch Media Inc., Company Info; www.launch.com; Rating: 3


Live365.com

With more than 30,000 stations, Live365.com is the place to listen to every aspiring DJ on the planet. This site is a Web-only hub for streaming MP3 stations, with playlists and content designed by users. Want to start your own station? Live365 will give you 365MB of storage space and the tools to do it. You can browse by genre, search by artist or keyword, and add stations to your presets.

The good news is that Live365's interface is a breeze to navigate. But sound quality is fair at broadband speeds and poor at dial-up, which is compounded by frequent song cutouts, skips, and premature ends. Even worse, an announcer occasionally cuts into a song to breathe "Live365" in your ears. Live365 is fun for hobbyists--but that's about it.

Nanocosm Inc.; www.live365.com; Rating: 2


NetRadio.com

When we first visited NetRadio.com's Party Hits station, Kenny Loggins's "Footloose" was playing, but the site said the song was from Queen's album News of the World. Clicking on About This Channel brought up a paragraph about KISS. That was enough confusion for us. With sporadic performance and limited selection, NetRadio.com acts like a beta site.

NetRadio.com's stations--like AllDanzRadio's--are either preset or in-house. There are dozens of genres stocked with good music, but each genre offers only one station and little customization. The Album Info button is nothing more than a link to buy music.

Our greatest complaint is that of six genres we tried, five were formatted to stream in 16K mono. The only other setting is 64K stereo, which still suffered from a bad case of reverb on our broadband line. On narrowband, songs often cut out, then scrambled to another point in the music.

Muze Inc.;www.netradio.com; Rating: 2


Real Radio Tuner


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Real Radio Tuner offers over 2,500 Web-based and terrestrial stations. You can search by genre, keyword, and location, but since there are no ratings for the stations, you have no clue how good the ones you find will be. Some stations are pulled from other radio sites; others are based in distant locales such as New Zealand and Matera, Italy.

Station response tended to be slow and sound quality a bit below average. Short of locating a particular station in a given town, which works well, we found Real Radio Tuner ultimately unrewarding.

Real Networks, Company Info; realguide.real.com/tuner; Rating: 1


ShoutCast

ShoutCast--like Live365--is a hub for streaming MP3 stations. The site uses Nullsoft's Winamp audio technology, but any application that can play streaming MP3 files should be able to play stations. ShoutCast provides the space and tools, and listeners produce all the stations. This explains why some of the thousands of stations are really bad. But most were quite decent, and all stations can be sorted by genre, connection speed, and keyword. Even better, ShoutCast displays the maximum and current number of listeners for each station, as well as a real-time song list. There are also station-specific chat rooms.

Considering the generally low MP3 bit rates broadcast here, we were impressed with the sound quality, aided in part by the Winamp player's ten-band equalizer. The kicker was never once having a ShoutCast station drop out, even on a 56K connection.

Nullsoft Inc., Company Info; www.shoutcast.com; Rating: 4


sonicnet.com

Similar to Echo in feel, sonicnet.com lets you pick one of the site's in-house, prede signed stations or construct your own station in four quick steps. The musical selection is vast, song changes are quick, and the sound quality with both narrowband and broadband connections is exemplary.

Though lacking in features that help you share your station, sonicnet.com emphasizes reviews, music news, and guest DJ stations. The site isn't shy about trying to sell albums, but we heard very few commercial interruptions. sonicnet.com lets you rate artists (not songs or albums). The interface could be easier to navigate, but sonicnet.com is the only radio destination within whispering distance of Echo.

sonicnet.com; www.sonicnet.com; Rating: 4


Spinner


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Spinner is a winner, despite our initial doubts. It is the only radio site we reviewed that required us to download an application, Spinner Plus 3.1 (the other players are applets and plug-ins for Netscape or IE). The console offers around 150 stations programmed by in-house DJs, and customization is limited to selecting 21 preset stations. There is no search function, and the player's process for adding preset stations is unintuitive.

Then the realization set in: Spinner sounded phenomenal--almost as good on a 56K line as on a T1. Not once did the stream cut out, and bit-rate drops were rare. We forgave the dearth of stations, since each was crammed with excellent and varied music.

Spinner Networks Inc., Company Info; www.spinner.com; Rating: 4


WindowsMedia.com

This hub for Web-based and terrestrial stations is visually engaging, packed with features, and ultimately so convoluted that it malfunctions. Within the Radio area are recommended stations offered in both dial-up and broadband bit rates. When we used a broadband connection, the recommended stations began playing within the browser. This was fine until we selected another station from the Radio Tuner, whereupon both songs played at once.

That said, WindowsMedia.com's entertainment news and industry partners (Billboard, VH1, and so on) are second to none. Once you figure out the difference between the site's recommended stations and those you must search for, the site is much easier to use, and you can quickly find what you're looking for (including international stations). Most of the stations had good, stable sound quality.

Microsoft Corp., Company Info; www.windowsmedia.com; Rating: 3


Yahoo! Radio

Yahoo! Radio is a simple hub site with links to over 400 radio stations spanning a relatively wide range of genres. The player delivers strong quality and easily adapts to both Windows Media- and RealAudio-based stations. But don't expect band info or community. Yahoo! does what it knows best--indexing Web sites into categories.

The faq and troubleshooting pages are admirable, and you can save up to six station presets. If you're looking for a highly navigable station hub without a lot of distracting content, this fills the bill.

Yahoo! Inc., Company Info; radio.yahoo.com; Rating: 3

Latest prices: Nullsoft Inc. SHOUTCast 1.8
Latest prices: All Multimedia - Art - Sound Software




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