One Last Month of Internet Audio Sites (... I Promise)

One more month of Internet audio sites; I promise next month to do something different. Many months ago, I reviewed the Imagine Radio site. Recently the site has undergone a major revision; this month we'll take a look at the new version. We'll also take a look at an Internet audio by Rolling Stone (the same one that puts out the Rolling Stone news magazine. And lastly, we'll take a brief look at a new and controversial audio technology known as MPEG-3.

Imagine Radio originally involved a downloaded player that used RealAudio technology to play songs and allowed the listener to rate the song as it played. The rating altered the subsequent songs that you listened to with the higher-rated songs being played more frequently. A couple of months ago I noticed that the player no longer worked and, when I went back to the Imagine Radio site, I found that the site had changed and the changes seemed very confusing. Now several months have allowed Imagine Radio to further improve and streamline the site into something worthwhile.

The new player allows the user to choose from many different genres. Three are of interest to Country Music fans. "The Bus" contains selections by "new country" artists; "Legends" contain selections by historically significant artists; "Alt.country" contains selections by country's avant garde artists. You can listen to preprogrammed selections in any category or you can register with the site and create a customized list of artists that cross any number of categories. Even if you don't choose to register you can check out other people's custom country playlists in the "Saloon" scene; there are 22 pages of Country playlists and each page contains 25 playlists.

The new player uses either the G2 Player (the latest RealAudio player) from Real Networks or Windows Media Player from Microsoft. It has 6 buttons that you can preset to any of the channel; the last button is reserved for the user's custom playlist. It shows the song title, artist, album source, and textural comment. The player also has links to broaden your listening experience. You can obtain reviews of the various artists by other registered users and you can add your own review. You can also select the "Artist Info" link and be taken to a Yahoo! search page for the artist currently playing.

This new site is definitely worth a visit and a bookmark. Create your own playlist and listen to your favorite artists all the time. You can modify your list at any time as new artists are added or your tastes are refined.

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