Thursday, September 15, 2005

Favorite Internet Radio Stations

LatelyI have been listening more and more to internet radio stations. The urge to acquire music is moderated by having so many great internet radio stations out there. While wishing to let more people know about these great stations I don't want them swamped. Broadcasting on the net is narrowcasting to a limited number of recieving slots. Whereas with traditional broadcasting the cost is based on the broadcasting itself not on the number of receiving slots.

Sleepbot: Sleepbot is the radio station to fall to sleep to. It is a station mainly devoted to ambience. Here is an educational filmstrip devoted to the history of the sleepbot environmental broadcast.

Radio Rivendell: Radio Rivendell is the radio to play D&D to. Instead of station ID breaks that other stations have, Rivendell has snatches of Gandalf intoning. This station is seriously into the Lord of the Rings. It also has a archive of the music they have played, sorting music by composer, album, movie and game. Rivendell broadcasts in both the Winamp and Windows Media formats.

Blues on Air: Blues on Air is from South Korea. American bluesmen and women have often had to leave the States to get some respect. White Americans only began to listen to the blues after a bunch of Brit blues fans, Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, rose to prominence. Leave to foreigners to take American music and culture seriously.

Poolside Jazz: Since the swamping of New Orleans I sought out places to hear the city's music. I haven't found a station playing ragtime but Poolside Jazz is good jazz station. Listen here for Poolside Jazz, there isn't a link on their homepage.

There are thousands more stations out there listed on shoutcast. Nearly everly genre and style are available. As well as music there are stations with comedy, as well as more specialized venues playing only Goon Shows (off air) and Star Trek.

Then there are huge stations run by the large public broadcasters, BBC, CBC and NPR. These stations have archives of past shows, not limited to merely streaming. BBC has both news, documentry and music stations. They have streaming and archived programs. NPR is focused on news and current affairs. NPR also has a weird federalism structure where the individual stations are run somewhat like franchises only looser. The CBC is mostly offline now because of lockout. CBC has streaming accross the five time zones of Canada. Program archiving is hardy used instead transcripts are sold. As if the business unit for selling transcripts has not beeen adjusted to the internet age.

1 comment:

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