By Christopher Breen
Nov 29, 2005
Does iTunes’ Radio listings fail to satisfy your craving for real radio? Perhaps it’s time for RadioTime. If you’ve fooled with iTunes more than a time or two, you’re aware of its Radio entry—an area of the program where you can listen to a variety of streaming Internet radio broadcasts. While having access to over 500 free and easily streamed music- and talk channels is a boon in anyone’s book, iTunes’ offerings are a little limited. Try to tune in your favorite “real” radio station—the broadcast channels you listen to in your car or on the kitchen radio—and you’re bound to be disappointed. Worse yet, iTunes provides no way for you to record those streams.
I’ve recently discovered a service that provides access to over 37,000 broadcast and streaming music- and talk stations from around the globe—RadioTime. Without paying a single penny, you can tune into a load of stations offered by the service, and play them through either Microsoft’s Windows Media Player or Real Networks’ Real Player.
For an annual fee of $39, you can schedule and record these programs, effectively turning your computer into a TiVo for broadcast and streaming radio. If you’ve attached a compatible radio receiver such as Griffin Technology’s $70 Radio Shark to your computer, RadioTime subscribers can tune it through the RadioTime client as well as record its output.