__H__ow many audio applications do you have on your hard drive? Xing, RealAudio, Liquid Audio, and the abysmal NetShow? Get ready for a slew of new products that look nicer and have more interactive features. Imagine Radio and Spinner.com (formerly TheDJ.com) both have stand-alone (non-Web-based) players with the promise of customized desktop radio. No more suffering through lame tunes or waiting all day to hear that elusive new Cornershop single. Hear a song, one click gets you the album.
Imagine Radio and Spinner.com bring you high-quality audio as you work, provided you have a very fast computer and a speedy Internet connection. In other words, don't try this at home, where these services will drop packets like crazy, resulting in choppy listening.
Both apps feature banner and audio ads; Imagine Radio plays four minutes' worth per hour, while Spinner.com has less than two. But as listeners to the ad-packed Howard Stern show know, there is more to radio than just avoiding commercials. Imagine Radio has hired radio professionals to "program" its nearly 20 stations, and it carries 24-hour news from the Associated Press, as well as a stable of talk shows. Spinner.com has plenty of songs (try 100,000), but no news or talk shows. It does allow independent musicians to have their music added to the rotation - a good and bad thing. Both apps allow you to rate songs, which affects their play frequency.
While Imagine Radio has players for both Win95 and Macintosh users, Spinner.com supports only Win95 and NT. At 6 Mbytes, Imagine Radio's download is large, but it includes the necessary RealAudio components. Spinner.com's app is less than a third that size and also includes RealAudio.
Clearly, Imagine Media and Spinner.com are trying to move the 70-plus-year history of passive radio listening into a more user-defined, computer-based world. That's no small task, but both these imperfect apps are significant steps beyond the current lineup on your local dial. One can only hope this spells the demise of plastic transistors spewing out mindless Top 40 modern rock.
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Tune in to Internet Radio
