Radioshift: A New Medium for Listening to Radio

Technology aficionados know that the radio is still a popular means of mass communications.  Today, people listen to the radio using transmitters or their computer thanks to the Internet.  I had mentioned an application a while back called AOL Radio which allows people to listen to select radio stations online for free.  Yet, Radioshift, in my opinion, surpasses it.  Radioshift is, without question, one of the most useful and enjoyable applications used to listen to radio via the Internet.

There are many features embedded in Radioshift that make it one of the premier radio clients used to listen to radio stations.  First, browsing for stations is extremely effortless.  The homepage of Radioshift allows you to play from a list of popular stations that other Radioshift users listen to.  Additionally, you have the ability to search for stations according to genres.  The three basic genres are spoken word, music, or sports.  Within those genres are subcategories to select from.  For example, if I want to listen to jazz music, I simply look in the music section and click on the genre titled “jazz” and I have a plethora of jazz radio stations to choose from.  However, if you’d rather search for stations based on location, simply click the “world” tab on the top of the Radioshift homepage.  At this point, you can decide whether you want to listen to radio stations in Los Angeles or Great Britain.

The most convincing feature of Radioshift that makes it a successful Internet radio client is its ability to record live radio.  The process is simple.  When you have a radio station in mind that you want to listen to, click on the name of the radio station.  It will direct you to the radio station’s page containing its listings and other information.  On the page, there’s a button that says subscribe.  Clicking that will direct you to will allow you to create a recording schedule; you can decide when you want Radioshift to record the station and for however long.  In addition, you can clip audio and transfer it to iTunes.  Personally, this was a selling-point when I researched this application.  Between the difficulty I have remembering song titles and the overpriced songs on iTunes, I can now record live music, edit it, and transfer it to my iTunes library easily.  I see this, in the long run, saving me a lot of money.

Unfortunately, with every application, a flaw exists.  In the case with Radioshift, it’s the same as AOL Radio in that not all radio stations you hear on a radio are available to listen to.  Nevertheless, the radio stations that you can listen to are jaw-dropping and just as enjoyable if you were listening to a relevant station that isn’t available.  In addition, Radioshift promises that even though it doesn’t support a station’s stream, it is working on making the stream compatible with the application.

Radioshift offers a free trial, but only for 20 minutes of audio.  Nevertheless, you can purchase a license for $32.  All in all, Radioshift is a good investment, given that you can record live radio broadcasts, whether it’s a talk show or music.