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An early look at Winamp for Android's SHOUTcast integration
This morning, I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at an alpha version of Winamp for Android. The beta version currently available from the Android Market is already a lot better than other media players, but judging by what I've seen today, it's going to get even better. For this alpha build, Nullsoft has focused on SHOUTcast integration. The implementation is still a little rough around the edges, but it works -- it works really well. You can browse the top stations, and browse by genre or search term. Click a station to listen to it, or push-and-hold to add it to your favourites for easy access in the future. Presumably, if you listen to one station enough, it might be automatically added to your favorites, too. Rounding up the changes, there's 'My recent stations', which is exactly what it sounds like. For more details, check the gallery below.
Streaming radio for Android isn't exactly new, but this is by far the most easy-to-use and functional implementation that I've seen. You might point to Pandora, but not only is it only available to American users, it's simply not in the same league as SHOUTcast. At the time of writing there are 44,454 free SHOUTcast radio stations, and the Android app can listen to any single one of them. If you're not excited by that, let me know: I'll send some goons around to forcibly remove your smartphone.
[Download Squad and Nullsoft, the developers of Winamp, are both owned by AOL.]
Comments
3
Subscribe to comments@davey_ladNov 16th 2010 3:47PM
For streaming radio i've been using TuneIn Radio for Android. It syncs with a free RadioTime account which lets you store your preset stations. Worth a go too. If you run Windows Media Centre there's also a plugin for that.
http://www.appbrain.com/app/tunein-radio/tunein.player
I'll certainly give this a blast though (shoutcast at least)
Sam JNov 16th 2010 6:59PM
I agree TuneIn Radio rocks. In fact I can't see Shoutcast replacing that app anytime soon.
rivviepopNov 17th 2010 2:50PM
TuneIn leverages Shoutcast - Shoutcast is both a protocol and the server software (as well as the website) that enables MP3 streaming radio. For example:
http://radiotime.com/station/s_34616/KPAC_883.aspx
...plays this:
http://stream.radiotime.com/listen.stream?streamId=1041762&rti=dihyG20zJBsGVkU0QU1CWwkyHENBRggnSg1FQQERJlxHRUBxMlYDDFQFdnwQRldiWAcUUAVPRG1HGwRwGE4AFVFGXXRqGAVGBEUFUltYYQM%3d%7e%7e%7e
...which in turn does nothing more than load this:
http://www.tpr.org/audio/kpac.pls
...which runs an Icecast (free Shoutcast server software, icecast.org) to allow you to listen to the channel.
Shoutcast is behind almost every app that streams music on the Internet. Shoutcast doesn't have to replace anything, it already runs everything. :)