Teach a man to fish for Internet radio

November 18, 2012 7:32 AM

Where is a good starting place for finding streaming music?

I've been Googling for different genres and styles of music, but I'm getting an absolute mess of results, most of them for individual stations or small collections. If I add "directory" I get a some decent results here and there but mostly a bunch of commercial websites linking elsewhere.

As far as the directories I've found, it would be nice to have something more granular than just "80s" or "adult contemporary", since I usually try to avoid all the Top 10 stuff I've heard hundreds of times already.

Any ideas how I can better search for good streaming music? For the time being I am giving Pandora a try, but I'd like to be able to head to a streaming radio station so I can pull up something totally different, and my streaming radio playlist is a little bit empty.

posted by crapmatic to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

Grooveshark has a radio feature that streams music based on a song(s) of your choosing.
posted by joyeuxamelie at 7:50 AM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Spotify also has the option to listen to a radio based on a song or artist of your liking.
posted by camylanded at 7:58 AM on November 18, 2012

Spotify has pretty excellent radio these days.
posted by two lights above the sea at 7:58 AM on November 18, 2012

I like Songza and my husband likes SlackerRadio.
posted by pised at 8:16 AM on November 18, 2012

iTunes has a massive list of streaming radio stations from all over the world under Radio in the interface. There's some French station that plays a lot of New Wave stuff that I listen to a lot.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 8:20 AM on November 18, 2012

Deezer is great if you're not in the US or can get around that barrier.
posted by ramenopres at 8:37 AM on November 18, 2012

A recommendation I made in an earlier thread: Radio Paradise is programmed — actual sets of this-song-segues-nicely-to-that-one-which-is-then-thematically-related-to-the-next-one programming, not what Pandora or Last.fm do — by a real honest-to-goodness DJ who has wide-ranging and eclectic tastes. Music ranges from old to new and from classical to jazz to alternative to folk-rock to I forget what else. Great stuff. It's my main source for learning about new music and new artists. (It's also listener-supported with no advertising, which is lovely.)
posted by Lexica at 9:35 AM on November 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

I pay rdio, which is about 80% of my sitting-at-work or chilling-at-home music these days. I find a lot of new stuff by just watching what the people I follow on rdio (some real-world friends, some randoms selected for interesting musical taste) are streaming.

In the realm of free, it seems like most community, college, and local NPR-affiliate stations stream live on the web these days, and those can be great sources of interesting music if you catch 'em during the right phase of their programming. I still hear a lot of things first on a couple of the local stations.
posted by brennen at 10:28 AM on November 18, 2012

Last.fm
posted by oceanjesse at 11:36 AM on November 18, 2012

8tracks is awesome if you are looking for music for a specific occasion or a mood... plus you can get it on your smartphone and stream it on the go
posted by dinosaurprincess at 4:14 PM on November 18, 2012

I really like soma.fm for its electronic/ambient stations, but they have other selections too. Not customizable like Pandora, etc. but the djs there do a great job.
posted by feidr2 at 6:09 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like We Are Hunted. Their schtick is that it is the 99 most blogged about songs online, so you get a pretty decent mix of random things veering towards indie pop but with a fair amount of hip-hop, EDM, World Music sprinkled in. I really like their interface and have discovered some really good band through them. Also like that they change it up constantly.

http://wearehunted.com/a/#/emerging/
posted by forkisbetter at 11:59 AM on November 19, 2012