Real player used to be the way to listen to music online, but thankfully now there are alternatives. I have tried many programs and formats and have decided that using foobar2000 and shoutcast radio stations is the easiest and least taxing on your computer and internet bandwidth. Here’s what you do:
- Download and install foobar2000 from filehippo.
- Go to shoutcast.com and browse the different stations and genres. You can even search for a music or type by keyword. For example I searched for ’80s’ and ‘.977 The 80s Channel’ was top on the list.
- Once you pick a station, right-click on the ‘Tune In!’ button and select ‘Copy Shortcut’ (Internet Explorer) or ‘Copy Link Location’ (Firefox).
- Open foobar and go to ‘File’, then ‘Add Location’. You can also hit ‘control+u’ on your keyboard at the same time.
- Delete anything in that text box, then right-click and hit ‘Paste’.
- Sometimes foobar will create a list of several addresses of the same link for that station, just delete all but one of those links (it doesn’t matter which one you keep).
- Double-click on that address in foobar to start the online radio stream. Once you click on it, it will display the station name instead of the address from then on.
You can add as many as you want and they are all free. I recommend any of the ‘.977′ stations for starters.