# 19 Digital Music

I regularly listen to Sky.fm at home. I bought an Internet radio after listening to the station on computer. I also was frustrated with commercial broadcast radio. I like the Smooth Jazz station and am listening to it now! On Sundays from 12-2 pm I listen and watch Jimi King live from the London studio, which is actually a room in his house.

I also listen to some broadcast stations through Internet radio. Since the Internet is world wide, there are many thousands of stations available. On St. Patrick's Day last year I put on a station playing traditional Irish music from Dublin Ireland for the staff to hear before we opened the branch. Authentic fun!

One disappointment is that a shocking number of stations around the world play primarily American music. For example, the most popular type of music in Kenya is country-western from the 50's, 60's and 70's. That was hard to figure until I heard a report explaining that an important part of their culture involves storytelling. The old country-western songs always have a story to tell, and this is the appeal for Kenyans. A station will actually go out of business for lack of listeners if it doesn't play a high percentage of country-western.

I haven't tried file sharing simply because I don't even listen to my own pre-recorded music any more. I like Internet radio and see no reason to buy or collect anything at this point.

I did find Pandora interesting, also the Sonos unit mentioned in the FAQ. I have a Soundbridge unit that plays Internet radio, and Sonos is something different again. However, in reading about the Sonos setup it's clear that it has it's own set of compatibility problems with various operating systems, etc. What I call the "monkey around factor" is too high. So until the bugs are ironed out, I can wait!