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AccuRadio is an application for music lovers to personalize radio channels with the artists, genres, and songs. Channels can be a mix and match of various styles in one place customized to a user’s tastes. Users can even “ban” artists they dislike from popping up on their channel ever again.

The multichannel radio app won a Webby Award for Best Radio in May of 2008. AccuRadio is based in Chicago and was founded by Kurt Hanson, creator of RAIN, the Radio and Internet Newslettter. Hanson serves as CEO of AccuRadio. Current statistics indicate over 73,000 unique visitors per month. The site claims over 400,000.

Similar Internet radio stations use complicated computer algorithms to determine what songs are similar and should be offered within certain genres or playlists. AccuRadio is personalized by the user, completely and individually. It also has accompanying mobile applications for iPads, iPhone, Palm Pre/Pixi, Android, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile devices.

The AccuRadio home page is filled with various tabs for genres: Rock, Pop, Oldies, Country, R&B/Hip-Hop, Jazz, Easy, Classical, Broadway, Latin, World, and More. Each tab breaks the genre down further into more specific classifications. For example: Pop offers HitKast with all hit tunes; Magic Sunny Hotter Mix with hits from the 80s and 90s; Magic Sunny even Lighter Mix filled with 60s, 70s, and 80s (billed as an ideal “at work” channel); Fresh for the newest pop music; Hip Hop; Top 00’s Hits with all the biggest hits of the 2000s; Christian Hits; A Flock of 80s with Pop, Rock, and New Wave; and even GleeKast with music from the television show Glee as well as the original tunes.

The “More” tab offers Holiday music, Comedy, Electronica, Christian Contemporary, Folk, Halloween and more. These are all also broken down into further defined genres.

It is simple to launch the AccuRadio player by simply clicking on a Listen button. The player opens in a new window with several options. The usual volume slider, play, pause, and skip buttons are accompanied by ?Ban – which will ban the current office from future stations; a Facebook sharing link which allows users to share the current song or channel by opening a Facebook window with a box for comment, and an opportunity to rate the current song.

The player also offers the title of the song, artist, album, composer, label, and year. Each song also links to Amazon for purchase of the music. Tabs are Now Playing, which contains the information described thus far, Customize by Artist which allows users to ban any artists from an extensive list (once banned, they will not show up again on playlists), Similar Channels (from a list of hundreds) with a list of channels that offer music similar to the one currently playing, Browse Genres offers over 60 genres including Bluegrass, Brit Rock, Celtic, Canadian, Native American, and more than you probably ever considered, and My Channels which is made up of the channels you have sampled.

There is advertising every four or five songs, but this is actually better than regular radio where there are multiple advertisements and disc jockeys taking up several minutes between songs. Advertisements on AccuRadio last less than thirty seconds. There is also advertising in a bottom bar and occasionally in the sidebar, but overall it is unobtrusive.

Users can “favorite” a channel by clicking the gray star next to the name of the channel. This bookmarks the channel for easy locating later.

No registration is required. Information is saved via cookie on the user’s computer. If a user’s computer is not set to Accept cookies, the application will ask for email addresses and/or not save blocked artist lists. Follow your computer’s instructions for accepting cookies for best site use.

AccuRadio is absolutely free to use.

AccuRadio will appeal to anyone who is open to Internet radio. The ability to customize your listening experience by banning artists makes Accuradio a cut above the usual Internet radio experience.

• Free to use
• No registration needed – simply enable cookies
• Over 60 genres
• Hundreds of channels
• Ability to “ban” a disliked artist
• Very customizable
• Wide variety of music

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