Me and radio have a thing going. We have a history. I knew radio back when it was popular and fun. WLS and WCFL Chicago. KXOK and KMOX St. Louis. Those were the glory days of radio’s second coming, second golden age. Thanks to television, radio needed to be reborn. Thanks to the internet, radio gets reborn. Again.
10,000 Channels and Nothing’s On
At last count, I had four or five internet radio apps on my Mac. A favorite is from CatPig Studios. CatPig? Of course, I tried it out. With a name that’s worse than Smuckers, why not?
Radium has six basic ways to fall in love with internet radio. First, it’s simple. Click the Radium icon in the Mac Menubar and select a station or search for a station.
Second, there’s plenty of stations from which to choose, including some subscription based stations (can you say XM?). Third, there’s an equalizer built in, and tuned to specific types of music. My preference is simply loud.
Fourth is the song history with details. That’s a plus. There’s album art, song previews, and integration with iTunes.
There’s also keyboard shortcuts so you can control what station plays and when without leaving the keyboard.
Finally, social networking comes to internet radio. Check out the integration with Twitter and Facebook.
Google Buzz? That’ll need to be changed to Google +.
What’s missing is all the recording and scheduling capability that’s built into Radioshift, another of my favorite internet radio machines. Radium is half the price, and has yet to crash.
Agreed- Radium is a fantastic app!