A Good Week for Internet Radio

Wow, this past week has been really good as far as finding Bluegrass and twangy Internet radio stations. First off, a buddy recommended BluegrassCountry.org, which has a great online station that seems to capture Bluegrass shows from all over the country and the world. There are shows from Australia as well as different parts of the US. The sound quality is great, very clean for only 56kbs.

But then I found out my favorite radio station, WDVX, finally opened an MP3 stream! They've been streaming over Windows Media forever, which I guess has been good since I've been able to hear my hometown radio station (from Clinton TN near my hometown of Maryville) even here in NC.... but let's face it -- the Windows Media Player only works on Windows. And I don't run Windows anymore -- hardly ever, actually. I mostly use my iBook and Linux boxes. So WDVX broadcasting over MP3 is a big deal to me -- I can listen to it anywhere, on any computer! Unfortunately, it's not a very high bandwidth stream (only 32kbps), and it's a fairly dirty-sounding stream too. However, I can't give up on them! They'll get it all cleaned up as long as I listen and support them!

And lastly, a buddy just sent me this last station, Merciless.org, which is actually ran by a single individual with a corresponding blog. She's based here in Raleigh, NC, and her station plays a bit of Top 40 Country (eek!), but a lot of Dixie Chicks, Lyle Lovett, the Waybacks, and other good stuff too. All in all, I listened for about an hour and I was really pleased with it. (I wonder if she's using DJ in a Box which was an Internet radio project ran by my buddy, the Racoon Fink?)

Also, since it can be a bit difficult to get the Live 365 URLs for BluegrassCountry.org and WDVX (I had a devil of a time since I wasn't on Windows), here they are for your listening pleasure. Note these will most likely play the station directly in your MP3 player of choice, if not, just cut and paste them into your MP3 player:

WDVX's MP3 stream
BluegrassCountry's MP3 stream
Merciless.org's MP3 stream