InterNet Radio Stations

Our system includes publically available Icecast and Shoutcast streams in addition to several other supported platforms. We are not responsible for the content broadcasted over the net by any linked or embeded resource for which we have no authority, ownership, interest or control.

Online Radio Station Genres & Plaforms

With many thousands of broadcast and "network only" type radio streams available on the Internet, the task of classifying them according to a particular genre or platform has become increasingly difficult. Many online radio stations no longer conform to a single platform and now play a mix of various genres, very much like traditional TV channels play a variety of programs throughout the day.

In order to create an effective directory of stations however, it is important to identify them according to what you would expect to hear when you tune in. Without a complete schedule for every station however, such a monumental task is almost impossible without knowing exactly what is being broadcasted at a particular moment in time. While it is true that some online radio stations provide a broadcast schedule, often the mix of songs during any particular block can still span across several platforms.

Here at RadioStationNet.com we want to create a directory that is useful. We have examined the way some other directories out there classify stations and are trying to come up with the best solution possible. They do not do anything "wrong" with the way they classified their collections of online radio stations. Some simply allow the station owners to submit whatever they want into their "genre" fields or tags, while others allow a station to pick from a select group of them, picking the genre that most closely matches the stations online broadcast.

With Internet radio stations, the task of classifying them according to a particult platform becomes even more difficult when you have streams from multple countries and in multiple languages. For this reason, our base directory of Internet radio stations have been restricted to those which have been identified as containing "English" content. Our team of moderators research each station that exists in our growing database and identifies things like the host country of the station, the language of their website and best matched platform based upon the information found. We evaluate their posted schedules, recently played songs and listen to each station in order to make a determination of the language, country of origin and most closely matched genre.

Despite the fact that our default directory pages are restricted to English content and the platforms we have chosen to use, we do understand that some of you might like to find content that is in other languages or perhaps of a genre that is not on our default list. For this reason, we are implementing new controls and search features which will allow you to find exactly what you are looking for.

About the Number and Type of InterNet Radio Stations Available

Some radio station directories out there have tons of duplicate entries for the same net stream, where they might have a different title or genre or even bit rate exposed as individual streams. Our net radio database works a bit differenly, and where possible such duplicates are filtered out. With the age of broadband internet technology providing the ability for most to listen to higher quality audio streams, our system works to identify the net radio strams with the highest bit rates which will allow you to listen to those with the best clarity. However, lower quality streams are appended to our generated smart playlists which will automatically switch to the next available stream for each station.

Net radio streams are not only broadcasted in several bit rates, but they are also broadcasted using a variety of encoding technology, such as MP3, Ogg, Vorbis, Windows Media, AAC and AAC+. Unfortunately not every device can play every type of audio format, which is why our first generation online player is built to support the VLC plugin. For web based listening, VLC was found to support the highest number of stream types available on the net. Unlike flash, real audio and windows media players which usually result in choppy audio after extended use, VLC can play most net stations and switch between them for a very long time without memory or processing issues, and with exceptional quality. However, most mobile devices do not have plugin support outside of having to install particular apps which only work on particular devices and with only some audio stream types. In the very near feature we will implement several other the technologies for serving the station audio to you using our online player, including native HTML 5 support and more.