Tun3r is a website that allows you to find internet radio stations quickly and easily. Beyond filtering stations by genre or language, it allows you to find stations by searching for a specific artist or song title that you like and will also search for text on the radio station home page. You can listen to internet radio stations within the Tun3r web interface or in your media player.
There are quite a number of good internet radio clients around (such as Screamer Radio) that allow you to browse lists of dozens if not hundreds of internet radio stations. And although these clients typically allow you to browse by genre or search radio station titles/descriptions, they do not provide a way for you to find a station that plays a specific artist or even a specific song that you like. Tun3r allows you to do just that. Here are some notes on this website:
- How to find stations you like: enter the name of a band or artist or a song title in the Tun3r searchbox and it will immediately find stations that have featured the artist or song in its recent playlist. You are able to view an extensive playlist, and therefore immediately know whether this is the kind of station that you would like. It’s also cool to be able to browse the playlists for ideas or inspiration.
- Design/interface: the Tun3r site looks really cool. Most of the screen is taken up by a big banner with tiny black and white thumbnails depicting the various radio station home pages, with a big orange crosshair floating over whatever station is being played (more on this below). Topmost of the screen is a smaller banner that depicts album art for the artists that are on the station’s playlist.
- Browsing/navigation: The real strength of this site is the search function, and once you do a search you can click on the “previous match” and “next match” buttons to browse through the results. Stations that are part of the search result for your query are highlighted in the big thumbnail banner and you can move the orange crosshair around to quickly trigger any of these.
- Available info: Aside from information on recent playlists, the interface also includes some info on the radio station and a clickable thumbnail that connects to its home page.
- Embedding Tun3r search: that’s right, you can clip a bit of code that will install Tun3r search on your blog or website. Really cool.
- Works internationally: apparently, due to the hike in internet radio fees many services (such as Pandora) do not work outside the US. Tun3r works just fine (thanks to Mraei for telling me about this).
The verdict: there are many music discovery resources Tun3r is fantastic for radio station discovery and just finding and browsing internet radio station in general. And its waaaaaay cool. Definitely check it out!.
Version tested: the site as of Sep 6th 2007
Go to the Tun3r website.
