The Streema Blog

Early last week we posted that we were working on a Song Information Aggregator.  Well, we got so excited that we decided to work on it a whole lot more and… we’re proud to announce that our initial DEMO of the feature is now available on both our website and Facebook applications!!

We wanted to give our blog readers a sneak preview of this feature, which is now live, but will not be widely promoted yet.  So, when you are listening to a radio station that displays the name of the song on our player’s screen, just click on the name of the song and we’ll take you to the DEMO.  To quickly try it out, here are a few stations that have easily accessible* song information:

- Power Hitz: Top 40 - Hip Hop - Rap

- 181.FM Rock 40: Rock - Adult Contemporary

- ETN.fm Progressive Channel ETN2: Electronica - House

In addition, once you’re on the Song Information Aggregator page, you can search for any other “Artist - Song” by using the search box on that page. For a quick example, click on any of the following songs:

- Lady Gaga - Just Dance

- Metro Station - Shake It

- AC/DC - Back In Black

And for those of you that are interested in the tech stuff, the development consisted of integrating YouTube, Twitter, and LyricWiki APIs.

We really think we can improve this much more, so please send us all the comments you may have about it. Bear in mind this is only a DEMO, so you might find some (or many) things that don’t work as expected. Hope you enjoy it, and as we’ve said, we’d love to hear your feedback!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

* Not all the radio stations in our directory may have this feature working - for more information, please, check our FAQ #4 .

At Streema, we are always thinking ahead and trying new things. Today we bring a sneak preview of something we’re developing, related to the song that is displayed on our player.  We thought you might like to check out. :D

It happens often that we hear a cool song while listening to radio on Streema - we then leave our site to search for that song’s video (likely on YouTube), look up its lyrics, and even wonder what people have been “saying” about it.

So, we asked ourselves:  why not build something simple that does that directly on Streema?  The result is the Song Info Aggregator:  meaningful + real time information.

(click over the image to enlarge)

What you see above is just a picture - it can and will evolve - so if you have some additional ideas about it, please let us know!  We’ll keep you posted in the near future as this cool feature makes it onto our site.

Disclaimer: Please bear in mind the Song Info Aggregator is an experimental development, so any comments or feedback would be more than welcome.

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

So, we just rolled out a new version of our player this week and wanted to make a quick announcement about it!

Before we let you in on the details, we wanted to say that rather than “seeing” the change, you’ll actually experience the difference.

Essentially, when tuning in to a radio on Streema…

• No matter which Operating System you have: Windows, OS X, Ubuntu (or any Linux related)…
• No matter which Browser you are using: Internet Explorer 7.0/8.0, Firefox 2 or above, Safari, Chrome, Opera…
• And no matter which players and plug-ins you’ve installed: Windows Media Player, Real Audio, Flash, etc…

… our new player will find the best player / plug-in combination for your computer.  And our new algorithm is much better than our previous one!

What does this mean for you?  Simply put, you’ll be able to tune in to a greater number of stations than before.  That makes us very happy.  :)

Anyway, hope you continue enjoying your favorite radio stations, and more than ever, your feedback with this new player will be welcomed.  Please, if you find anything not working properly, let us know!

For those Facebook users out there, this new player will be rolled out on our Facebook application (Streema Radio Tuner) over the next few weeks.

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

This time, instead of writing about Streema, we’ll ask:  what would you like to have on Streema?

We are opening this to anyone who has any idea, and we mean: ANY idea, feature, whatever that you would like to have on Streema.  So far, we’ve heard that it would be great to access Streema in your car; to know the name, band, discography of every played song in any station; to interact with a radio DJ just from our application… we think the possibilities are infinite, so we encourage you to think about anything.  Maybe, one day we may satisfy all of them… you never know.  For now, just let us know about them!  :)

As for the question in the title…  “It’s not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on.” -Marilyn Monroe

Stay tuned!

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, check out what’s cooking below!

Yes, we’ll soon be changing the design of our Facebook application’s popup player.  If you are also one of our website users, you’ll notice that the new player has the same style as the one on the Streema website.

Anyway, just wanted to give you a sneak preview.  More new cool stuff is coming soon to our Facebook application, so stay tuned!

The Streema Team

We’re really - and we mean REALLY - excited to announce something that will be the beginning of a “before and after” moment in Streema’s history:  from now on, you will be able to see the name of the song that is currently playing.  This has been heavily requested by our community - and to be honest, to be able to finally show it to all of you it is unbelievably awesome!

So, how does this work?  It’s pretty simple to explain:  many radios stations offer this information in all sorts of different ways, sometimes via the stream, sometimes via their website.  What we do is figure out how to grab that information (which is many times not easily available) and then we’ll display it both on Streema.com’s player (check the screen shot above) and on our Facebook application’s popup player.  Here’s a quick sample of radio stations for which we will show the song information:

- Power Hitz, Hits from the U.S.
- NME Radio has THE best Alternative Rock in the U.K.
- Slow.fm plays Slow and Ambient music
- Roots Rock Reggae with classic reggae in Jamaica
- Deepinside - DJ Sessions if you want go Electronic ;)

In addition to most of 1.FM, 977, Sky.fm, 181.fm, AVRO, and M2 channels - check them out!

By the way, do bear in mind that we currently have this feature only for a reduced number of stations, but believe us that we’re working hard to eventually have this for as many stations as is humanly possible.  : )  In the meantime, you might want to see our directory ordered by availability of song information!

Is that all?  No Sir!  On our Facebook application, you’ll be able to update your Facebook status with the song information.  Also, keep an eye out because we might have something similar on our website Streema.com in the not-so-distant future.

Where else are we going with this?  We’re not sure yet, but we’d love to hear directly from you about this.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we are!

And more than ever… stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Santa brought us a present and we wanted to share it with you! We received notice this past week that Streema was chosen as one of the Top 10 innovations which have “contributed most to radio listening during the past year” in the annual list developed by About.com’s Radio Guide. What a great way to end the year!!

While we’re at it, we would also like to thank other blogs for mentioning us recently. Believe us when we say that we are really happy to hear how our site is being appreciated across the web. We’ve been working very hard to bring you a new radio listening experience and this encourages us to keep on rockin’. : )

Anyway, do stay tuned and see you in 2009!

The Streema Team

It’s almost the end of the year and it’s time to reflect on the last 12 months.  It has been a hectic year for everyone between the Olympics, the global financial crisis, the US Presidential elections, and other global events, so we hope listening to radio has made it a more enjoyable ride.  :)

For us at Streema, 2008 has been a great year: we launched a completely new design for Streema.com, two Facebook applications and the blog you are now reading.  Once again, we wanted to thank you because without your comments, feedback and suggestions, Streema wouldn’t be what it is today.

What awaits for 2009?  It’ll be even busier for us than this past year, so fasten your seatbelts radio listeners!

Anyway, we don’t want to end this blog post without the traditional end-of-the year wishes, so here we go: HAPPY HOLIDAYS, and more than ever, stay tuned!

The Streema Team

If you haven’t visited our radio directory recently, we recommend you do that right now! :)

Aside from finding a growing directory of thousands of radio stations, you’ll see that we now order radio stations by popularity, as measured by our community’s activity. It’ll be easier than ever to find the best stations out there! Check out the screen shot below.

If you look closely, you’ll also notice that on the right side of the page there’s a showcase of the top station for a select number of genres. This is so that you can quickly explore radios that Streema users have been listening to a whole lot recently. :)

Anyway, we hope you enjoy this new radio discovery tool - and we look forward to bringing you a more social and better community experience at Streema in the coming months.

So, one more time, stay tuned!

The Streema Team

So, we have some more good news: today we released a new application for Facebook called “Streema Radio Tuner for Pages“. If you have a Facebook Page, this application is for you!

“Streema Radio Tuner for Pages” allows you to add a radio station to your Page, so that visitors can listen to radio directly from there. Clearly, we weren’t satisfied with only one application, so we created another one! :P

Jokes aside, what happened was that many Radio Owners, DJs, and Producers wanted to include our classic application “Streema Radio Tuner” on their Pages, so we figured we’d give them a way to do that.

With this new application, we hope to approach many Radio Page owners or any Page administrators who want to improve their visitors’ experience. This is something really new, so we look forward to receive your feedback!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

PS: If you have a radio, band, or any other music-related product or service, we highly recommend creating a Page on Facebook by following a few easy steps. For more information, click here.