Screamer Radio

[updated 2009.7.2]
Screamer Radio “is a freeware Internet Radio player for Microsoft Windows.”

• It’s easy to use
• It’s not bloated
• It’s ad free
• It has no spyware
• It has a huge database of radio stations
• It has a cool peak meter
• You can easily record what you’re listening to
• You can hide it in the system tray
• You can play back on multiple soundcards
• .. and it’s free!

Pick a radio station (now this is really impressive — I didn’t know most of these even existed!).  Tune in, turn on, and listen.

Note: some of these stations listed have broken links.  Keep trying and some of them will work.

Didn’t find the station you wanted on the furnished list?  Here’s a possible way to include it:

Open the File drop-down menu, select Manually Edit Favorites and look at the list of possible stations you’ve already selected.

The easiest method is to copy one of the entries to a new line, and then edit it to match.

Example: I found in my Favorites:

<Station title=”Mellesleg.FM – Soundtracks (192 kbps)” url=”http://www.mellesleg.fm/”>
<Source>http://195.228.254.168:8070/</Source>
</Station>

Note: the “Soundtracks” actually read something non-English (“Foado”), so I edited that first to something that meant more to linguistically-challenged me.

Now the lists didn’t include every station from Mellesleg, so I wanted to add others that looked interesting.

I copied the existing entry to the next section.  With Screamer open, I clicked on the link to that group of stations, and found another I liked, which wasn’t on the lists provided with Screamer.  When I clicked on the new station, I got the IP address for it shown (in Firefox) which was 195.228.254.168:8120, which differed from the first one only in the section after the colon:

<Station title=”Mellesleg.FM – Musicals (192 kbps)” url=”http://www.mellesleg.fm/”>
<Source>http://195.228.254.168:8120/</Source>
</Station>

So I edited the change, made it into “Musicals” and I had a new entry in my Favorites.  Saved the file, and used Screamer to change to the new Favorite channel.

The same principle applies to other channel addresses — especially if you already have another one from that station.  If not, see if you can get the IP address and work out your own custom link.

Vattoz: Music Search Engine

MakeUseOf has a post on Vattoz: Music Search Engine with a Playlist Support.

Vattoz “searches for songs based on artist name or the song name and displays the results in a clean interface where you have two options – play the song or add to playlist.

The playlist is a box which could be dragged and dropped anywhere on the web page and maintains the list of your favorite songs and plays them. The site uses cookies to remember your playlist. You can also share your playlist with friends.”

GuerillaRadio: Search, Listen & Download MP3 Files From Web

MakeUseOf has a post on GuerillaRadio: Search, Listen & Download MP3 Files From Web

“Just type the name of the artist or band and click on “Find”. GuerillaRadio will then search for it on the web and bring you a ready playlist of MP3s from that artist. You can play tunes online or download to your computer.”

Features:

• Search, listen and download MP3 files for free.
• Play and download as many files as you like.
• Clean and easy to use interface.
• No sign-up needed.

GuerillaRadio

SomaFM internet radio station

SomaFM is an Internet radio station with a varied approach.

Pick a type of music from the many listed forms, select the quality you want, see what’s playing at the moment.

Everything from Boot Liquor for country/western lovers, to the jazz of Sonic Universe, to Secret Agent and even Doomed.

Songza – find and listen to music

Songza is “the music search engine & internet jukebox”

“Unlike KaZaa or Bit Torrent, Songza users can only listen to songs, not download them. And unlike Last.fm or Rhapsody, Songza permits users to choose exactly the song or artist they want to hear, and does not require them to subscribe or pay for its services.”  “Songza pays for licenses from all the major performing-rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), who then pay the publishers and writers in proportion to the number of plays they get on Songza.”

There’s also a Firefox add-on here to allow you to search Songza.

Mashable list of essential music and audio links

Mashable.com has a list of 90+ essential music and audio websites.

These cover music discovery tools like LastFM and Pandora, social networks, and more.

Pick a station, any station….

TUN3R.com has an interesting method of connecting you to web radio stations….

You slide the orange needle around, or click on one of the innumberable graphics, and find all sorts of broadcasts.

Who knew there was a station called “Secret Agent: The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For Spys and P.I.’s too!” or “Radio Zs – The Hungarian Jewish Radio” or all these others?

If you can’t find something here to listen to, you’re not trying!

Musicovery – pick your energy level for music

Musicovery is a webRadio site with an interesting gimmick – you can pick the style of music (R&B, Jazz, soundtracks, etc.), the decade, and the energy level (dark, positive, etc.).

Top 5 Music sites from Windows Fanatics

‘Lockergnome’ Chris Pirillo has a list sent to him of 5 sites for music on the Web.

The list included:

• Pandora
• Last.fm
• AccuRadio
• Project Playlist
• Clear Channel Music

Some of these also allow you to discover new artists who are similar to what you already like (such as Pandora) and all of them are good resources for listening.

Songerize for trying out music

MakeUseOf has a review of Songerize.

The founders refer to Songerize “as SeeqPod’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. And that’s exactly what it is, you just enter the name of your artist and let Songerize choose and play one of his/her tracks. Apart from that, Songerize also allows you to search for by title and (if found) listen to them. You can’t do much here, there are no playlists or add to favorites options.

MeeMix internet radio

MeeMix is a new Internet radio site, similar to Pandora.

• Create dynamic play lists (Mee stations) using only artist name or favorite song title.
• Customize stations further by using ‘mood’ (relax < — > party) and ’surprise me’ sliders.
• Broadcast and share your stations with friends.
• Rate playing tunes (from -6 to +6 ) to improve music recommendations.
• Create and save as many music stations as you want.
• Browse stations created by other users: by genre (Rock/Pop, Alternative, HpHop/ R&B, Metal and Country/Folk), by popularity, Top 100, etc.
• Do you have a Twitter account? Twitt currently playing songs to your profile.
• Totally free and legal.

Recommended by Clif Notes Newsletter.

Last.fm for music tryouts

Last.fm is a music sampling site which tracks what you listen to, learns what you like, gives you personal top charts and new music to discover.

Pandora lets you try out music

Pandora is a great way to try out new music, based on what you’ve liked in the past. The Music Genome Project classifies music by a variety of parameters, and then compares what you tell it you like to other music that has similar parameters. You “train” Pandora by accepting or rejecting what it finds. Rather like “computer dating” for music, the system can find new music along with your favorites, and open you up to new groups and artists. You can also divide your likes into certain types of music (”Stations”), so if you want to listen to vocals, or instrumentals, or jazz, or classical, you can set up what you like in your custom “station” group, and choose your preference for the moment (for example, you might not want to listen to rap while trying to type a research paper!).

OpenPandora Open Pandora is a Windows desktop front end for the Pandora music scheme. Features include: hide to tray; popup tray notification balloon; full control from tray icon; control with multimedia keyboard; global shortcuts; mini Player; integration with Last.fm; integration with Microsoft Messenger; integration with Xfire; lyrics, and more. (recommended infopackets newsletter)

Lifehacker has 15 Ways to Get More Out of Pandora, with add-ons, tips, and links to software.