Radio is a cat with nine lives. From my count, radio has a few lives left. The technology that started early in the last century and entertained and informed a few billion people still manages to adapt to changes in society and technology.
Movie theaters didn’t kill radio. Record players didn’t kill radio. Television didn’t kill radio. 8-tracks, cassette tapes, CDs, and DVDs didn’t kill internet. The internet has tried to kill radio, but stations today thrive thanks to the internet itself which expands a local or regional radio station’s audience world wide.
How do you get internet radio on your Mac? Search for ‘radio’ on the Mac App Store and you’ll be treated to a few dozen internet radio applications; some free, many a few dollars, and some of which let you time shift internet radio programs by recording them and making the shows available on iPhone, iPad, or iTunes.
Here’s an internet radio app for the Mac which falls in the middle of the crowd. It’s called Soriko Radio and its priced right at a few dollars, gets updated frequently by an attentive developer, comes with an extension station list with special focus on international internet radio stations, and– get this– there’s an iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Apple TV version.
Using the Mac version is about as easy as it gets. Choose a station from the list and playing begins immediately. One click puts the station into iTunes.
The iPhone version works much the same way, but also comes with an option to move the music through AirPlay to your television and Apple TV.
While the Mac version costs only a few dollars and is available from the Mac App Store, there’s also a free try-before-you-buy version from the developer. The Windows version is free, but only for Norwegian radio. The iOS version for iPhone and iPad is free, too.
And, yes, there’s internet radio available on your Watch.
Soriko will display song data, too, including the current song, recent songs, and more. The internet radio station playlists are handpicked and receive streaming audio from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, USA, Canada and Australia, but also lets you enter your own internet radio station URL. Music can be opened in Soriko Radio into Spotify but not Apple Music. Yet.
The negatives are modest but notable yet match the nominal price tag. Soriko Radio does not record internet radio stations and the app itself is decidedly Mac-like. It’s simple, devoid of feature clutter.