LiveWire

I like Real Audio and judging by the number of sites that use it, so do a lot of other people. The problem with Real Audio is more of a good problem like a coach choosing between two awesome quarterbacks to start the game. But it's a problem nonetheless keeping track of all the stations. Because it's so easy to setup and run your audio/video streams, there are thousands upon thousands of sites on the Internet broadcasting around the clock. Finding good ones that match your tastes can be an arduous task.

There are several big Web sites around like Broadcast.com and Real's own site that list stations, but even they can't find or list all of them. It you really want to find a broad selection of every type of ecclectic and popular music you should pair your copy of the Real Player with LiveWire. You've probably seen browser utilities that act as personal search engines and allow for faster and easier searches of the big sites. That's essentially what LiveWire does but instead of searching for Web pages, it hunts down audio and video streams and stations.

Using LiveWire is nearly idiot proof. I consider it totally idiot proof, but I never like to overestimate the intelligence of some people. So let's just call it very easy to use. To find what you're looking for you simply enter in a few words describing either the format you're looking for (rap, metal, etc.), a station name if you know it, or some descriptive keywords. LiveWire will search a constantly updated database listing of over 4,500 different stations that are currently broadcasting as well as over 100,000 archived broadcasts. You'll get a results list from which you can do one of two things. You can launch an external player and listen to the audio or watch the video or jump directly to that station's Web page if they have one.