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We live in an age of instant access to all things media. Information travels at the speed of light, tapped easily enough from major cities as well as remote countrysides. By now, the internet’s vine-like tendrils reach to the far corners of the world. Yet it is amazing how many people have yet to plug in to even half of what’s on offer.
Music is one of the top web searches, year after year. Sharing and download sites pop up regularly, with varying degrees of staying power. But one real gem of online content consumption is streaming web radio. In the olden golden days of commercial radio, listeners had no choice but to be spoon-fed a diet of prescribed content. The prevalence and endurance of “oldies” stations is a testament to the strength of the original programming, so who’s complaining? Nevertheless we, as humans, prefer to imagine a sense of sovereignty. We like to go where we want to go, do what we want to do. And at least some of us like to choose what we listen to. Enter the miracle of twenty-first century internet radio sites.
Have You Heard This?
To the purist, many so-called radio sites are actually libraries of music which can be accessed repeatedly. Listeners can program their own stations so favorite songs rotate at the desired frequency. Again, no reason to complain here. These songs are often free to access, with only limited advertising interruptions. But real web radio, streaming live content, is also easy enough to find and, likewise, is broken up with only the requisite commercial announcements to keep the station viable. With so much access to free portable music, we are quickly becoming a planet that spends little to no money on music. To the audiophile, the web is our oyster.
