Beatles Radio

Stream URL: http://www.beatlesradio.com:8000/stream/1/
Website: http://www.beatlesradio.com/

At first glance, Beatles Radio seems to have an implausible business model: they only play Beatles music. When you figure Beatlemania only lasted 10 years, you'd think they'd've run out of product long ago.

But when you add up all the various versions of the Beatles' own catalogue… in-house BR remixes … covers by other artists… other Apple acts… the solo acts... things their kids recorded… tracks on which a Beatle performed back-up… stuff recorded by other people that they wrote, arranged, or produced… you do indeed have an immense, eclectic -- and growing -- body of work. Throw in news and listener interest content, personality patter, infrequent plugs for the Beatles Fab 4 Store, and those near-universal canned adverts, and what's left sounds remarkably like old-school small town radio… if your local station had played nothing but Beatles-related music. (Which, as those who were there will remember, wasn't actually that far from the truth…)

The BR listener page offers a range of connection choices, including a "B" channel that runs on staggered time, several mobile apps, and an executable M3U playlist file.

So if you dig the Beatles, pop music history, or the ongoing development of this new medium, swing by Beatles Radio. Sound of the past, wave of the future.


The Gouge:

Genre: Canadian radio
Location: Vancouver
Time zone: NA
Stream URL access: Excellent
Bouncer: No
Type of radio: Net-only
Mic presence: Pre-recorded (?)
Stream reliability: Excellent
Format selection: MP3 128 kbps, pop-up Flash player
Song ID: Yes
Found it on: iTunes Internet Radio catalogue

Cameroonvoice

Stream URL: http://67.215.11.170:1724/
Website: http://www.cameroonvoice.com/

Few stations demonstrate the power of Internet radio better than Cameroonvoice: it's a West African station, addressing a West African audience, on West African time, but located in… Montréal. There, with the benefit of political stability, economically-secure benefactors, and reliable infrastructure, it can deliver a consistent product to a listenership that may not enjoy all – or any – of those advantages. In the past, such a service would have had to resort to the shortwave band, with all the legal, financial, and technical constraints that entails. But here on the new frontier, it's accessible to anyone who's determined to do it.

Cameroonvoice is essentially two services. For most of the week it streams a rich and provocative selection of music; most times it's Afropop, in its infectious, interminable classic form. But we've also logged soca; salsa; big band; Motown; Anglo-American folk of the 50s and 60s; Latin oldies, reggae; hip-hop; Desi pop; club dance mixes; and even Appalachian mountain music on scratchy old 78s. Apparently the CV audience is uniquely eclectic and sophisticated in its musical tastes. (Or maybe they're just nudging them that way! If so, it's the kind of nudge we all could use.)

Spoken word dominates local weekend evenings and is often live. Most is in French, with an occasional English programme. (French is Cameroon's main business language, though it's officially bilingual; a fact reflected in the station's name.) Themes run to news, West African politics, the arts, and public interest, with a pronounced nationalist bent. (Station schedule here; all days and times West Africa time zone: GMT + 1).

The CV website includes a respectable listen page with clickable playlist files in four formats, as well as an embedded player in three bit rates, with song ID. In the six-odd months we've been listening the stream has frozen up twice, playing the same few minutes of programming over and over for more than a week. In both cases, a message to station management resolved the issue.

Cameroonvoice is a great station to include in a scan list; at any given time, a random stop here is likely to pipe something interesting into your speakers.

The Gouge:

Genre: West African radio, French language radio, Canadian radio
Location: Montréal (programme schedule on West Africa Time)
Time zone: GMT + 1 (West Africa Time)
Stream URL access: Excellent
Bouncer: No
Type of radio: Net-only
Mic presence: Local weekend evenings for the most part; some live
Stream reliability: Fair
Format selection: Winamp, iTunes, Real Player, Windows Media Player; embedded player (24k, 48k, 128k)
Song ID: Embedded player only
Found it on: Virtual Radio playlist

CKOI 96,9

As of 4 December 2015 this stream is definitively broken. Please contact us if you have a valid stream URL for this station. In the meantime, its website player is still operational. 

Stream URLs (UPDATED AS OF 7 June 2015):
http://1671.live.streamtheworld.com:80/CKOIFMAAC_128_SC
http://1671.live.streamtheworld.com:3690/CKOIFMAAC_128_SC
http://1671.live.streamtheworld.com:443/CKOIFMAAC_128_SC
Clickable .pls file: http://playerservices.streamtheworld.com/pls/CKOIFMAAC_128.pls
Website: http://www.ckoi.com/

French-language commercial broadcast radio from Montréal, with sister stations across French Canada. CKOI is the big rock station in town, playing Top 40 hits to the youth market in French and English. Raucous "morning gang" programming during local morning commute; station-produced parody tunes and comedy during local evening commute.

The French-language music is virtually all Canadian (best on the planet, in our opinion).

Of particular note:

• Le Décompte Franco (The Francophone Top 40), Sundays, 2300 - 0200 GMT (1800 to 2100 local).

CKOI is one of those stations that inexplicably hides its stream URLs from potential listeners. Worse yet, it has a tendency to kill them without notice, forcing IRLs back to Google for a working address. The .pls file linked above works as of 7 June 2015; to load the station, or replace a dead URL, download a copy of the .pls file here.

Double-clicking on this file loads CKOI automatically in iTunes. If ineffective on your technology, crack the .pls file with a text editor or word processor (File--->Open---> select .pls file). Manually add one of the URLs inside to your net radio application.

And of course, there's always the station's own Web player.

The Gouge:

Genre: French language radio, Canadian radio
Location: Canada
Time zone: GMT – 5 (Eastern Time)
Stream URL access: Poor
Bouncer: No
Type of radio: Broadcast
Mic presence: Yes
Stream reliability: Good (stable, but occasionally goes 404.)
Format selection: AAC only
Song ID: Yes
Found it on: Yourmuze