Internet Radio- Pandora Radio seems to have expanded it's offerings

[Neutrikconnector]

I've been using Pandora for a few years now, and had created a few, I thought pretty cool stations. It took me a while to get them tuned. Then they started offering "Genre Stations." They were fairly limited in the electronic areas.

I just logged on today, and they've got a lot more stations in Electronic and Dance now.

I'm going back and forth between Drum & Bass, Trip Hop, and Dub Step right now.

This is kinda cool to me, because it gives me a quick way to explore a genre, where as before if someone mentioned, oh I listen to trip hop, I'd have to ask them for about five or six songs to start a station.

Anyone know of any other good online "radio" stations out there? And what's everyone listening to? Is there something you've heard recently that's caught your ear?

[Mark A. Jay]

There are some great internet radio stations out there (as well as services), but a lot of them annoy me - because they use lossy codecs at very low bit rates. It's a shame really, because (and it happens frequently) I hear of a cool station or service from my peeps, and I go check it out...and then hear how poor the sound quality is. It's at that point I ask myself "why the low quality?" and "when will I learn?". In other words, yes, I LOVE hearing the obscure track that I have not heard in (perhaps) decades, but then a few seconds into the track when I hear the artifacting, I reach for the mute button.

There are a few net stations out there that have reasonably high bit rates, as well as some stations that have a full "HD Radio" stream, and those sound great - but regrettably, there are many more that are 128 kbps (or even lower).

It's ironic really...all these high speed connections around the globe, and yet, bandwidth costs still force a lot of music to be 'less than' it could be, but for affordable bandwidth.

Anyway, as for a really good station, I would recommend KEXP in Seattle. They have a pretty broad variety that plays from time to time. Another good place is Ann DeLisi's show (Essential Music) on WDET (Detroit). Oh, and there's anotehr great station out of Cinci, but their call letters escape me now.