I realised a couple nights ago that I’d been pretty well listening to the same 50 songs for the two months since I arrived in Waterloo. This is a problem.

I’d resisted upgrading past Winamp 2.7, since reports had been bad on Winamp3. But I sprung for it, having heard about the Winamp Radio Stations, which operate under the dubious legality of ’since it’s streaming media, it doesn’t matter that you get whole songs for free.’

I really like it. I’ve got an all-time hits station and an classic rock station bookmarked that have both been great. The titles are unimportant, though. What matters is that it’s really just someone’s 24 hour playlist being broadcast over the net for anyone to listen to. And as long as their taste is agreeable, the relationship is good.

I’d remembered reading poor reports about internet radio some time ago, but my recollection is that the article author was checking out RealPlayer streams and was connecting via a fast modem or slow highspeed.

Well, I’m connecting on quite brisk highspeed (Rogers), and I haven’t had a single Buffering Break in my 128kbps streams in the 5-6 hours that I’ve listened to them over the past few days.

I realise, scrolling through the gigantic list of stations, many with less than ten listeners, that there’s probably a lot of really lousy ’stations’ out there. But the Internet is ruled my mob law. Yes, anyone can publish whatever they like out here, but it’s the votes of confidence by readership that make some fail and others not.

Mike

← Earlier Later → Posted at 12:03 am to Internet.