AccuRadio

AccuRadio is one of the best music Internet streaming services. It offers well over 1,000 stations. It's very easy to use and you can customize stations to suit your listening habits by rating every song you hear. Unusually, the site also offers an unlimited number of song skips as long as you sign up for a FREE account. You can also ban songs and artists forever.

AccuRadio pays the bills with ads on their website and with commercials on their stations but all account holders will receive the benefit of a reduced number of commercial breaks.

The Chicago based outfit has stations featuring everything from classical, opera, beautiful music, Broadway, jazz, blues, many rock and country music stations, folk, singer-songwriters, hip-hop and Christmas music. There are hits stations for every decade from the 1950s through the 2000s and ones that offer Christian music and comedy.

Examples of the unique channels AccuRadio fans can enjoy are Ladies Sing the Blues, so titled because it plays only blues music performed by women. They offer stations featuring Korean and French pop, and ten Canadian stations.

Another very cool feature provides you with the freedom to curate your own stations to suit your tastes. There are two ways to do this. One is by applying a four or five star rating to songs you want to hear again. They are automatically placed into your very own, personalized station called Five Star Radio that will only play those songs. There is no limitation on how many tracks you can add.

The second way to make your own diverse station is by blending two or more of them together into one stream. So, if you want to combine a folk music station with one that plays classic rock and one that plays outlaw country you can do so with ease.

According to Wikipedia AccuRadio draws "nearly one million listeners per month, averaging in at about 500,000 listening hours per day." The online encyclopedia also notes that it is "usually the eleventh most listened to web streaming service among all U.S. broadcast groups that stream online, with about 15,000 average active sessions." As you can see, it’s very popular. I’m surprised that with its great features, ease of use, and free listener services that it isn’t higher on the list.

The bottom line is if you can't find something you like on AccuRadio you should not bother making music a part of your life.

Unfortunately, I always encounter one very annoying problem when casting the service to my stereo with my Chromecast Audio device. The sound frequently drops out completely for one or two seconds. This can happen several times in a short period of time but the stream is just fine when played through my HP laptop.

ADDENDUM ADDED MARCH 27, 2018
Due to my desire to use AccuRadio with Chromecast Audio I sent an email to them for assistance. Here is their prompt reply: "The reason Chromecast Audio drops out when you are connecting to our service is that we don't currently support Chromecast." I have to admit my disappointment but now I at least know the reason and I appreciate their quick reply. Let's hope they fix this soon.

Comments

  1. Yes please fix. I like to cast to my tv while im cleaning the house and speakers on laptop not good compared to tv.

    ReplyDelete

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