Online Radio Stations

There are some amazing places to listen to music on the web. I’ve been dipping into London’s own Resonance FM (http://www.resonancefm.com) for a while now. They broadcast across London and live on the net. There is also an archive service to listen to material online, and download in some cases. The schedule includes a vast range of programming hosted by the London Music Collective – there’s music from the far reaches, spoken word, poetry, recorded sounds, and experimental. It’s worth dipping into to hear things you will never have heard before. I particulary enjoy the weekly show ‘Adventures in Modern Music’ which is hosted by writers from The Wire magazine where you can be guaranteed to hear loads of music by people you will have never heard of. There’s always something on each show which I really enjoy.

Anyway, all of this leads me to another station which I disovered recently. It broadcasts out of New York, and has web streams and archived material at its site (http://www.wfmu.org). I’ve been downloading shows and listening to them at leisure. The diversity of the material played on this station is fantastic. One of my favourite shows so far is ‘World of Echo’ which plays jazz, left-of-centre, punk etc. It’s refreshing stuff hosted by a guy called Dave Mandl who has his own website too, linked from the station’s pages. There’s also a programme called ‘The Radio Thrift Shop’ hosted by Laura Cantrell, which plays mostly Country music. Now I find country music difficult to listen to – but the stuff she plays is brilliant. Lots of really early material – bluegrass and stuff like that. She also plays early jazz. A whole heap of gems in each show.

Why, you could be listening to it whilst you’re reading this!