Nov 21 2011
How to Listen to Radio Stations on the iPhone
Many people use their iPhone to listen to music, either through music stored on their device or through streaming services like Spotify, but many people still enjoy live radio broadcasts and there are several ways to listen to the Radio on your iPhone.
The iPhone doesn’t have an FM radio built-in but it can utilise it’s Internet connection, either wifi or 3G, to deliver radio stations to your handset.
Firstly there’s a great free App called StreamItAll Radio which will let you listen to your favourite Radio Station. StreamItAll contains a massive database of online Radio Stations from around the world, you can simply tell it which country you live in to get your regional channels or you can manually add channels from any region in to your channel list.
I use StreamItall to listen to BBC Radio 2 on my iPhone and the quality is on par with any FM or DAB radio I have listened too.
Alternatively there are dedicated apps which allow you to listen to specific (mainly commercial) radio stations. The functionality of the dedicated apps tends to be more diverse then in StreamItAll, often including news articles, discussion forums or Twitter Feeds and even catch up Radio Facilities, although of course you can only listen to one station or family of stations through each dedicated App. A fantastic example of a dedicated radio channel app is the Talksport Radio App, which is feature well & works really well.
Most radio apps will work over 3G Internet but it’s important to remember that most Mobile Networks set a limit on how much data you can download before you get charged extra. Make sure that you know exactly how your Data plan works, have an unlimited data plan (eg The One Plan on Three) or use Wifi to listen to Radio Stations on the Internet.
