It's the little things...

[jducoeur]

So it's taken two months to sink in that, if I'm working at home, I can finally use Internet Radio to my heart's content while working, without an IT department grumbling about my bandwidth usage or someone in the next cube getting cranky about the noise.

I *really* hope I can make a go of this. So far, the process isn't sucking. But now I need to find some decent radio stations on iTunes. Any recommendations?

Comments

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

last.fm has been working well for me today. I'm listening to "Fatboy Slim's similar artists" now. I've had shit-all for luck using iTunes radio stations that don't end up annoying me an hour or two.

[baron-elric.livejournal.com]

We like Radio Paradise so much that we give them money regularly. Nice mix of music.

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

http://celticradio.net/

[jducoeur]

Oooh -- that's an intriguing one that I hadn't previously come across...

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

Based in Boston.

[jducoeur]

After listening for a little while: not bad, although it seems a *smidgeon* mellow for my tastes on average. I lean towards the very kicky end of celtic -- the Rare Air end of things. I'll need to give it some more time, though, and get a broader sense of their repertoire. (And in general, I need to explore Radio365 a bit, and decide if I'm willing to give them money...)

[vortexofchaos.livejournal.com]

radioio.com has all sorts of channels with different kinds of music.

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

Have you tried http://www.pandora.com/ yet?

[jducoeur]

No, but I'm intrigued. I've just signed up for it, and I'm going to play around with it today. Thanks for the pointer...

Try Pandora, too

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Try Pandora, too. Tell it a song you like and it'll play similar songs—where "similar" is based on the Music Genome Project. Works pretty well.

Re: Try Pandora, too

[jducoeur]

Got the same recommendation from iangunn. Trying that out today -- thanks!

Re: Try Pandora, too

[jducoeur]

Okay, that's working rather nicely. I like the combinations it's finding: for example, it took my fondness for Barenaked Ladies and Weird Al, and correctly added Moxy Fruvous to the list. (And it took my love of Rush and properly inferred that Styx and Yes belonged in there.)

So far, it's getting an accuracy rate of over 80%, which isn't half-bad given that I've only just started to train it...

It Isn't iTunes...

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

...but WFUV (http://www.wfuv.org) has streaming audio 24/7. If you like Triple-A format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_album_alternative) radio, you'll like 'FUV....

[doubleplus.livejournal.com]

davidbyrne.com (http://www.davidbyrne.com) has some interesting stuff.

[elizabear.livejournal.com]

Muppet Central Radio!
http://muppetcentral.com/radio/index.shtml

[serakit.livejournal.com]

Yahoo lets you make a customized radio station. Admittedly, the music front page's graphics are annoying as all-getout, but the actual music station is good- you pick genres, and rate songs, and then it knows what you like and picks things it thinks you'll like.

[shava23.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's on iTunes, but I know some of the live365 stations are -- check out ethnotechno.com. It's what's now called "Asian Underground" although when I started it was "South Asian Techno." Fine stuff, with one foot in classical indian carnatic and various styles, and one step solidly in this century if not a bit more out there.

[jducoeur]

Oh, that sounds like fun. I've heard just a bit of that flavor, and been looking for more. Thanks!

[jducoeur]

Just got around to checking this out. (I've been slowly playing with the various music recommendations.) Excellent background music for programming! This may finally push me over the edge into paying live365 money, though: the ads are *really* irritating...