Planet Rock

For those of you who keep up with radio news, this one will need no introduction. Planet Rock has caused a huge uproar in the DAB market, as despite growing listener figures, awards and list of famous DJ's, their parent company (GCAP) is getting rid of them as they aren't profitable. There is a potential saviour though, as Brian May has taken an interest.

Putting all the publicity to one side, what's the station like for us Wi-Fi users? 2 words:-

ROCK ON!

Ok for those who like things a little less succinctly, Planet Rock is good. To be fair it's a niche station, but it's a pretty big niche you could easily include bands from The Beatles to the Darkness and still have room for ZZ Top and Alice Cooper (who as it happens presents the breakfast show). I do like my rock, and this station gave me a big fat load of it, mostly from classic bands, but not always there best known work. Some early Hendrix, a bit of Clapton, then back to earth with a large slice of Meatloaf. All good rock.

The technical side is as smooth as you'd expect from a profesisional station, although it does seem to take an AGE to buffer to the Revo, no worries though as once it's buffered, it's a solid connection. The site is... a little dissapointing, it has a forum, it has features on some rock stars, it's ok, its standard. It's dissapointing as the station seems to exist on it's passion for the music, so this basic site just seems so vanilla...

At the moment a commercial DAB station, with the obligatory online / wifi side, the station has DJ's, news and ads (although these seem to be relatively sparse and repetative, which is, as someone pointed out to me, possibly the reason they're not making money?). Even here though they're pushing the music. As mentioned Alice Cooper presents the breaky show, what he lacks in a sense of humour and vocal flow he makes up for in his huge knowledge of the people making the music. He seems to have a bit of a back story for almost every track he plays, and I love it, other presenters are also (if not equally) part of the Rock scene.

So without a shadow of a doubt Planet Rock gets a TUNE IN rating, seems a little 'small potatoes', as they won the Sony Digital station of the year award a week or so back, but there you go. Good luck to Brian May with keeping the station open, Planet Rock is so good, I've retuned my only DAB radio to it (although that was partially an objection to how bad Virgin / Christian O'Connell have become)

BeatlesRadio.com

I thought I knew what I was going to get when I tuned into BeatlesRadio.com, with a little over 200 songs recorded by the fab four I did worry that an entire station to them would get a little repetitive. As it turns out although there is a heavy Beatles presence on the playlist there is also a fair amount of other tracks played. These mostly seem to break down into music of a similar style from the Beatles era, covers of Beatles songs and solo work by the members of the band (although you might be relieved to hear I didn't stumble across any of Ringo's stuff...)


So what's it like? Not too bad to be honest, I like a bit of Beatles every now and then and this deliver if not exactly what it says on the tin, something near enough to it that you're not disspointed. After all with a slightly generous average track time of 4 minutes, you'd have to repeat their entire back catalogue every 14 hours, all Beatles, all the time woul wear thin pretty quickly. They've got a good mix, the music from the era blends in well, as does the solo work. The covers gives the music a bit of a twist just giving a different slant to a song you've known for a while.


Connection wise I never had an issue. They seem to classify themselves as a stream, so there's a slighty odd american who introduces the station everytime you tune in to it, but it only lasts 10 seconds or so and then its straight into the music. BeatlesRadio.com is online online only, so no DJ's as such and only really advertises its own and sister radio stations \ websites. After a week or so listening to commercial stations I must say I find the lack of ads and introductions refreshing.

The supporting website is pretty detailed with a lot of supporting information and services available for the average Beatle fan. Picture and video pages are a nice touch and a forum to provide the community a voice is also available. They also seem to have a good line in merchandise, some connected to the station, some just Beatles memorabilia.

Overall it's a well thought out station, it provides a die hard Beatles fan enough to keep them happy while not boring the rest of us with an endless cycle of the same songs. Backed up well and with no connection issues I give BeatlesRadio.com a TURN-ON rating.

Houndogradio.com

This stations a bit of an oddity in that in ONLY seems to be available on wifi radio's. Searching for the station on google or going straight to the station name, houndogradio.com takes you to a placeholder site. No links to the station, no links to much at all...

But what about the station on wifi radio? It came up under the genre 'Bluegrass', but to my untrained ears, it definitely has a heavy country influence in it's playlists. I better start off by saying that country and western music isn't my normal genre, I don't especially dislike it, but other than the odd Johnny Cash CD I'm not a big listener. Having said that I really enjoyed the music on this station, I really enjoyed the mix of tracks played. The songs were interesting and that little bit different from my normal tastes while being accessible enough not to put me off. I didn't recognise even one artist or track, alhough that's probably no bad thing given my main knowledge of C&W finished at Shania Twain and that fella who had an achy breaky heart. Overall the music was a nice gentle introduction to a new genre.

Connection to the station via wifi radio was simple and relatively problem free. The station dropped every now and then, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Station jingles were relatively short and well intergrated with the music really not interrupting the flow of the station.


All this leaves us it the mystery of the missing website, a shame really as the station should be one to try out, but without a front end on the web I feel they're really missing out on most of their audience.

The disappointing lack of a front end website is just outweighed by the excellent blend of music to give houndogradio.com a TURN-ON rating.