I would really love to just stick it to Rogers/Fido in anyway possible. Since they managed to surprise us in giving us 5 times the amount of data that ‘heavy’ users will need, why don’t we use a little extra. I know it may not be a good idea to bog down the network and cause connection problems but Rogers should have a killer network that can handle anything. We pay $7 for the upkeep of the network, it should be able to handle 100,000 people streaming audio and video all day at the same time.
So far I’ve managed to use about of gigabyte of data so far since I got my iPhone 3 weeks ago. About half of that has come from streaming internet radio.
I use a couple of methods to stream radio, I have two apps from the app store and the other method is something I talked about in the past.
The first app I use to stream radio is AOL radio. This app is only available from the US App Store but is very easy to get if you follow this information.
This app lets you connect to AOL and CBS radio stations from all over the States. It includes talk, sports, and every music genre. It even includes dedicated stations for certain artists like Metallica and 2pac. This app is free from the app store and it doesn’t get much better than this. However, there is absolutely no Canadian support. Some of the stations are internet based so you won’t get commercials, and some are regular radio stations.
The second app I have is Tuner. This app costs $5.99. What’s the difference? There are way more stations available. Now $6 isn’t really that much to get access to so much music but still the cost of all these apps add up. The benefit to Tuner is that there are more stations available. It also includes both regular radio stations and internet radio stations. Another benefit to tuner is that it does allow you to add streams that aren’t included in their list. I haven’t had any success with this but it is possible. There is a little bit of Canadian support, the only station I’ve found so far is CBC radio 3. That was the first time I’ve ever heard of CBC radio 3 but I do plan to listen it it.
The last method that I use is web based streaming radio through Safari. I talked about this a couple months ago. Basically it is a webpage with a built in quicktime player and plays Astral Media radio stations in Canada. They have quite a few stations, some in all major cities across Canada. You can read more about this method here.
The iPhone still can’t do flash in Safari so that leaves most radio stations out. Almost every major radio station’s website has an option to listen live. This is done through a flash player. On the iPhone, you get a nice blue lego box with a question mark when you try to load these.
I wish I could listen radio stations such as 99.3 The Fox, 102.1 The Edge, The Beat 94.5, and Kube 93.3. These are the stations I want to listen to but there is no iPhone support. If anyone has been able to get these stations to work through an app or some special stream, let me know.
Here’s a video to show you how it works, the sound quality, and the differences on 3G and edge:
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3 Pings to “How to eat up data on your iPhone: Streaming Radio”
14 Responses to “How to eat up data on your iPhone: Streaming Radio”
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1. mike jones Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pmthe biggest problem with the radio apps is that you can’t play in the background!
anyone found a workaround around this?
also, do you know how much data it is using per time? that would be helpful in making sure we don’t go past 6gb. for instance, if it was 500mb/10 hours of listening time. -
2. Eric Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 7:51 pmI see no mention of Last.fm - the free app is available and (unlike Pandora) Canadians are allowed to listen!
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3. ruffdeezy Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 7:52 pmI haven’t tried last.fm. How is it? What Canadian stations are there?
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4. Partners in Grime Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 9:00 pmI like 105 Classics.
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5. monoclast Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 9:06 pmJust point the iPhone web browser to http://somafm.com!
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6. ruffdeezy Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 9:28 pm@ mike jones
Yeah that is a problem, I usually just listen when I’m doing something else but it would be nice to be able to go into a webpage or something without losing the music. The web based streaming audio will play in the background, but you can’t use safari for anything else, you can go into the other apps though. -
7. Jesse Dyck Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 12:53 amCBC Radio 3 is amazing. All great Canadian indie musicians. I recommend it!
@Mike Jones
Should be as simple as finding out the bit rate that the radio station is broadcasting on. Eg: 128Kbps = 128 Kilobits per second.
128 Kbps / 8 = 16 KB/s
16 KB/s * 60 seconds = 960 KB per minute
960*60 = 57,600KB/h = 56.25MB per hour of streaming radio -
8. Teebs Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 1:56 amHow exactly do I locate CBC Radio3?
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9. ruffdeezy Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 2:03 amI think you can search for it
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10. dubmon Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 8:28 amA BitTorrent client for the iPhone would certainly be a great way to stick it to Ted Rogers while enjoying your favorite video content via BT. An iTorrent might be closer than we think:
http://torrentfreak.com/itorrent-a-bittorrent-client-for-your-iphone/ -
11. woo Says:
October 26th, 2008 at 6:39 pmooTunes will let you stream most any station (all the CBC stations for example: see http://demo.ootunes.com/radio_streams_that_work_on_iphone/cbc )
It plays in the browser, so you can put it in the background to check your email, etc. Only hard thing is setting it up cause you have to open a port for access.(and in full disclosure, I wrote it and sell it)
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12. Ade Says:
October 28th, 2008 at 3:57 amDude, I listen to 102.1 The Edge via online streaming in Scotland - UK
I too have been searching for a way to listen thru my iPhone.
The nearest I have come to playing custom streams is the Fstream app (get it in iTunes store - FREE!) but: sadly it doesn’t support flash media streams :-( so no Edge streaming. It does support other asx streams though. So it is good for lots of other stations. And most importantly you can add your own stations to the list if you know the URL of the stream. -
13. ash Says:
August 13th, 2009 at 1:46 pmThe best way to listen to CBC Radio is of course, with our new CBC Radio app for the iPhone and iPod Touch!
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=325946767&mt=8
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14. mMichael Says:
August 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pmHere’s a vote for WunderRadio. Worth every cent, use it daily.
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August 19th, 2008 at 10:30 am
[...] How to eat up data on your iPhone: Streaming Radio [...]
August 24th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
[...] Posts How to eat up data on your iPhone: Streaming Radio— [...]
October 5th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
[...] a fan of the radio apps for the iPhone. I have almost all of them. My favourites so far have been AOL Radio and Tuner Internet Radio. Those two are good, but they do not compare to WunderRadio. The reason? The number of stations! [...]