The best mobile radio app

What’s the only thing better than a smartphone with a built-in radio?

An app like TuneIn Radio that lets you listen to — and record — more than 30,000 radio stations from around the world, not to mention thousands of online-only stations, too.

From rock to pop, hip-hop to reggae, classical to country, this app works with the RadioTime music directory to let you search for great music by artists or genre, and then you can bookmark the stations you like best. For example, I found a gem of a station called GotRadio Mash-Ups that plays two tracks cleverly mixed together (such as Madonna vs. Death Cab For Cutie, M.I.A. vs. New Order or Mary J. Blige vs. Snow Patrol).

Plus, you can pause, skip forward or back between tracks like a personal video recorder (PVR). Many stations offer commercial- and DJ-free music and will often show album art with each track, too.

Tap the record button to save it to your iPhone or iPod touch’s integrated flash memory and play it back anytime you like. Unfortunately, you can’t transfer it to your iTunes library so you can’t weave it into existing playlists and you aren’t able to multitask by hearing the music while, say, playing the game (if you close the app, the music stops). That said, the TuneIn Radio website says you can play MP3 and AAC stations in the background while surfing via the Safari web browser but I haven’t figured out how to do that.

TuneIn Radio first asks if it could know your location — using the iPhone’s GPS or WiFi functionality — and within a second or two you’ll see a thorough list of your local AM and FM stations.

It’s not just music, either, as you’ve also got access to news, talk, sports and old time radio (OTR) shows – and the app can recommend related stations to check out based on your tastes.

The latest update adds an alarm clock, record timer (along with a sleep timer) and the ability to search for stations playing your favourite song at the time, but only select U.S. stations are currently supported.
 
For about the price of a good cup of coffee, you can’t go wrong with TuneIn Radio — one of my favourite apps to date.

Readers, have you tried this app yet? Use any other streaming radio apps you can’t live without?