In April of this year, I gave you a brief look at the NetRadio site. This month we'll take a more detailed look at another internet broadcast site: Spinner.Com. I became aware of this site when a limited set of its stations were offered over Comcast @Home, one of the cable-modem internet access services. In exploring Spinner's site, I discovered a broader set of stations than was offered through the @Home site. Recently the technology has been updated to take advantage of higher bandwidths, giving FM-quality streaming.
Spinner.ComSpinner.Com is an internet broadcast site offering over 120 stations in ten different genres: modern rock, vintage rock, top hits, classical, country & folk, urban, dance, jazz & blues, world & new age, and themes. The Country & Folk genre breaks down into a wide variety of stations:
- Alt.Country - Rock tunes with a twang
- Americana - Home grown from the roots of Country
- Bluegrass - Fiddle playin', banjo pickin', partner swingin' good time
- Classical Country - Hank, Kitty, Johnny and Patsy
- Country - Ten-gallon tunes
- Folk - Tales of the common man
- Hol-Country - Have yourself a kickin' little Christmas
- Rockabilly - Rip-roaring roots-style rock 'n' roll
- Top Country - Current Country hits
- Y1K Country - The top 100 Country songs of the millenium
The last topic is really a misnomer since Country music is really less than 100 years old. Anyway, the site provides you with a way you can see what is currently playing on each station. The list is refreshed every several minutes. The site offers you a choice of players; the streaming players are based on RealAudio while the download player is based on WinAmp technology. I recommend you download the free Spinner Plus player. It works with Windows 9X/NT and is launched from the desktop without having to go through your browser. The Spinner Lite player is a web-based player that uses your browser but works on both Mac and Windows 9X/NT. Lastly there is a Spinner Music Download player that works with Windows 9X/NT systems to playback downloaded music (e.g., MP3 files). While I haven't tried this one yet, I suspect, based on the answers to the FAQs, that music selection suffers from the usual MP3 availability (or lack thereof).
When installing the Spinner Plus player, you'll establish an id and password and configure the channels for the player (which stations go on which channel buttons). On launching Spinner Plus, the player loads and begins streaming the first station (leftmost channel on the first page of 3). You can edit the channels from the player to either add or change the stations that a channel plays. As you probably figured out by doing the math, there are twenty-one defined channels and if you try to define all of them, you'll run out of stations in the Country & Folk genre.
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