Apple Thoughts: Radium, Internet Radio for the Mac

If you are looking for a simple, unobtrusive Internet radio program for OS X, I think you may be happy with something called Radium from CatPig Studios. This is a slick little program, that costs $16.00 USD to register (they also offer a 30-day full featured trial period) and sits in your menu bar when launched. The beauty of the program is it's simplicity.

Once you install it, the icon sits in your menu bar, just waiting to serve up all of your Internet radio needs. Just click on the icon and it brings up a simple search field to search stations you have listened to in the past (a user modifiable channel list also appears below the search field). Obviously if this is your first time using it, this area will be blank. So all you do is click on the gear icon in the upper right side to bring up the preferences pane to start adding stations and networks to your channel list (this is also where you can ask for help, register the program and set your bandwidth connection).

Figure 1: The search field options

Once you are into your preferences pane (the image above, right side), you can search for your stations by name, genre or even location. Locate the station or stations you want to listen to, and adding them to your channel list is as simple as clicking on the box to the right of the station or network name. Then all of the stations or networks will show up as a list under the initial search field (the image above, left side). You can also add stations to the list if you don't find one to your liking simply by clicking on the "+" sign at the bottom of the "Radio Networks" screen. If you want to see what they have available, they have a list of thousands from all over the world. You can even set up a favorites list by clicking on the star next to the stations. Once that is done, all you have to do to bring them up is to click on the star to the left of the search field. Simple.

Figure 2: Add Sirius to your channel list.

If you have a Sirius account, you can also add this to your channel list. Do a search for Sirius in the Preference pane and once you click the box to add it, you get the login screen above. This is also available for the XM online listening option, just do a search for XM and you get the option to add them. Initially I thought that it was only for Sirius but it also works on the XM side of things. If you aren't a subscriber, you may not know that even though XM and Sirius are combined now, they each have their own separate options for listening to their channels via the Internet. So whichever one you have, you are covered.

I've used this on a variety of types of connections, from my Verizon MiFi to work to my home network and it has worked flawlessly, and I've had no issues with the stream such as slow downs or pauses. As they say on their page, and I couldn't have said it better myself, "Say hello to our internet radio player. It sits in your menu bar and stays out of your way. No browser necessary. And it just works."

This program is well worth the cost.

Jeff Campbell is a fan of all things Apple, an X-boxer (the 360 kind) and geek. He works as a floor supervisor in a 911 center in the Portland, OR area, and lives in a small town just north of Mt. Hood with his wife, two kids, two dogs, a snake and a tarantula. Oh, and a three legged cat named "Tres."

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