Have there ever been a time where you got fed up listening to the same songs over and over again in your collection? I do. I tried to remedy this by getting as much as songs in my computer, even going as far as downloading torrents consisting of massive batches of songs, some of them nearing almost 10 GB.
Although, nowadays, most of the time when I would initially popped up my winamp listening to music, was overtaken by another niche, and that is-listening to internet radio, a new, odd hobby I recently picked up on. Specifically, I had been visiting shoutcast a lot lately, which I’m not mistaken, is a site which compiles just about any kinds of radio stations from all around the world. This leads to an extremely massive collection of radio stations which contain just about any kinds of genre. I also like the way it separates and categorize it’s genres, and it made it very easy to listen to specific genres according to mood. I even got myself a radio app on my phone which uses the shoutcast library.
During times when I felt exhausted, I love entering the classical music section, throw myself to bed, plugged in my earphones, and just relaxed myself listening to some calm, classical tunes. The classical music stations I usually visited include Venice Classic Radio Italia and CINEMIX. I think there was a station where it purely focuses on orchestra, and another where it focuses on guitar rendition of classical pieces, though I don’t quite remember specifically the names of their respective stations. When I’m out, most particularly at work, I like listening to the radio stations at the Hard Rock section – one of the station I frequently checked out is the PowerRock 107, although these past few days, I find the songs they air seem to be getting slightly repetitive. I also like checking out the Jazz music section at times.
Shoutcast also has an anime OST section and obviously, it was the most frequent section I usually checked out. Just the other day, I listened to a very lovely song, which if I’m not mistaken, is a orchestral rearranged version of one of the BGMs in Steins;Gate – Gate of Steiner. The mysterious lullaby for some reason, just sounds more alluring in orchestra form. I especially love “surprises” like this when I’m listening to internet radio. One of my favorite anime radio station is AnimeNfo Radio, though that doesn’t stop me from listening to other radio stations as well, including Anime Classics Radio, Extreme Anime Radio.
Although after finding out shoutcast even had a few Vocaloid-specified radio stations as well, being a fan, I just had to listen to them, currently overwhelming my fondness for listening to anime OSTs in shoutcast. And since Vocaloid has like tens to thousands of songs, listening to them in radio makes it so much more easier and convenient. These past few days, when I’m just chilling at home, I usually just listen to LeekRadio, one of those aforementioned Vocaloid-specified radio station.
Of cause, there are still a few problems. If I’m having internet issues, I had to switch radio stations, switching to one that uses a lesser audio quality (I usually opted for ones with 128 kbps, and if that doesn’t work, then I go for 64 kbps). Conveniently, shoutcast also listed down the bit rate along with the list of radio stations so that really help. The other problem with using shoutcast is that the track names of the currently airing song barely updates. So the name shown might not be the name of the song currently being heard on the radio station, which makes trying to check out on songs you might want to listen to a second time a bit hard. Honestly, I had already listened to quite a number of great Vocaloid songs on the radio station without even knowing the artist, track name and anything about the songs themselves, so it’s quite impossible to listen to them again even if I want to, embarrassingly.
Even so, listening to internet radio stations seem pretty fun for some reason. If I have a good internet connection, chances are, I will be visiting shoutcast instead of playing my familiar collection of music in my winamp. Any of you listen to internet radio as well?
