If you get tired of listening to your own music collection and really don’t want to download music to your phones anymore, you can always opt to listen to the radio.
Most of today’s modern smartphones have come with built-in FM radio which allows you to listen to music whenever and wherever you want. However, if your phone doesn’t have this feature built-in, you can use the Internet connection to listen to radio stations from all over the world.
If you have an Android phone, thousands of live radio stations are sitting in your pocket right now. There’s no need to use headphones to listen to the radio stations. All you have to do is download one of the many available radio apps on the Android market and you are all set. Here I’ve picked eight of the best free radio apps that you can use to listen to radio online on your Android phone or tablet.
Tunein Radio
If you like listening to radio, then Tunein is the app for you. It is by far the most popular internet radio app on the Android market. This app offers more than 100,000 live radio stations and two million podcasts from every continent for you to choose from. You can browse the radio stations by music, news, sport, talk, language, location, and many other topics.
There is also a search bar for searching specific radio station from all over the world. Once you’ve found a channel, click on it and the station will automatically stream. You can add various radio stations to a Favorite list as well for one touch access.
Tunein Radio app is available in two versions: Free & Pro. The pro version lets you record everything you love from the app.
Pandora Internet Radio
Pandora is one of the best internet radio apps on the market. This app allows you to create up to 100 personalized radio stations based on your favorite artist, band, or song. Simply enter a name of the artist, band, or song to start creating your own favorite music station.
You can also indicate if you like a song, and Pandora will program the station accordingly to your likes. It is a best way to discover new artists and genres.
The free version of Pandora is ad-supported. If you would prefer to listen to radio without ads, you can sign up for Pandora One ($3.99 for month or $36 per year) to enjoy your personalized radio completely without ads. Pandora One also allows you to listen for up to five hours in a row without the worry of your station pausing.
Internet Radio PCRadio
PCRadio is another great app to stream music on your Android device. It provides you with hundreds of online radio stations of varied genres and themes: Anime, Dance, Electro, Humor, Pop, Rock, Relax, Meditation, Religion, and many other genres. It also provides access to Russian music.
Like the other radio apps, you can add favorite radio stations to your presets and access all of them from a “favorite” button on the dock.
The great thing about it is that you can listen to all the stations in high sound quality even with a low speed of internet connection. So, if you find that your other radio apps are lagging behind because of your slow internet connection, PCRadio is the app for you.
This app also offers pro version with some additional features. These include record channels, set timer, enhance quality stream, and remove ads.
Jango Radio
Jango Radio is a free and beautiful-looking radio app that allows users to listen to a customized radio stations like Pandora. All that users need to do is to type in the name of the artist you want to hear and Jango will customize a station which plays a similar kind of music.
It can tune in to more than hundreds of stations and features cool pre-set stations. You can pause, skip and heavily customize the artists you hear. If you like to have more control over what you hear on the radio, definitely have a look at this.
Sky.FM Internet Radio
Sky.FM is also a good internet radio app for Android that provides more than 60 radio stations on a variety of genres and categories. You can choose from genres and time periods such as 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, Pop, Rock, Jazz, Hip Hop, Rap, Top Hits, Music soundtrack, and many more.
This app allows you to stream music in the background and operate the station from the lock screen or with external controls. Also, you can save your favorite stations and set your stream bitrate preference with this app.
Upgrading to a premium Sky.FM radio gives you higher audio quality and removes all commercial ads.
XiiaLive™ Internet Radio
Similar to TuneIn Radio, XiiaLive offers a huge number of radio channels which has over 50000 live radio stations for you to select. All the channels are divided into categories: Rock, Dance, Hip-hop, Country, Talk, and many more.
The app makes it easy to search for a desired local radio station and organize your favorite radio stations. Users can also sort the radio stations by the type of genre, favorites or the top hits.
The most attractive feature of XiiaLive is the ability to stream songs in your choice of audio format (AAC, MP3, MP4, etc).
iHeartRadio
iHeartRadio is an all-in-one internet radio service that lets you listen to live radio stations or create customized channels based on songs or artists that you like. (unlike Pandora, iHeartRadio is commercial free). Simply pick a song or artist to create your own commercial-free. iHeartRadio has a database of more than 18 million songs and 450,000 artists to choose from. If that is not enough, you can browse for live radio stations by genre and location. Over thousands of radio stations from coast-to-coast are available anytime and anywhere.
The latest version of iHeartRadio offers a powerful feature called “Perfect For”. This feature allows you to find hundreds of stations tailored to your every mood.
TuneWiki
TuneWiki is a revolutionary new way to experience your favorite music on your Android device. Besides playing the music on your phone, the app lets you watch music videos or listen to radio via the SHOUTcast radio service. TuneWiki also provides lyrics for the song you’re playing. While it doesn’t work perfect all the time, but it does a heck of a job. There is also an option that lets you translate the lyrics to over 40 different languages.
A very cool feature of TuneWiki is called SongBox that allows you to create and edit playlists and look for new tracks worldwide. You can find and follow friends and users to control what they are listening to in your SongBox.
These are some of the best internet radio apps which help you listen to the various radio stations for free. If you’ve found other radio apps worth trying out, please do share them with us in the comments below.
Source: 8 Best Free Radio Apps For Android