The Streema Blog

If you’ve recently been to the Wikipedia website, you may have seen a big banner at the top asking for donations.  While there are many websites that ask for donations, please allow us to explain why this one is different.  This is not only a donation to Wikipedia, but rather a great way to invest your money – yes, that’s right, we said *invest* your money… and we mean invest it in your future and everyone else’s.

To start off, here’s a bit of context:  Wikipedia is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is a non-profit organization that supports itself with donations.  In spite of this limitation, Wikipedia is the 5th most visited website on earth, beating Amazon, Blogger or even Twitter – and the best part is that it’s run by only 57 people and, very importantly, millions of volunteers.  Do you know many institutions like that? We certainly don’t!

This year Wikipedia is turning 10 years old and it’s doing a fund raising campaign. The major goal is to keep Wikipedia free of charge and free of advertising; and even more importantly, keeping it open, with the possibility of using the information in any way we want to and spreading it everywhere – see more on how the donations will be spent.

So, why is it better to give your money to the Wikimedia Foundation rather than to other organizations?  Or why is it better to donate it $20 to support Wikipedia instead of just saving (or spending) that amount?  Well, the truth is that we don’t live alone in this world… and while many of us have been lucky to have had many opportunities in life, not everyone has had those same opportunities.  Frankly, one of the best ways to help improve the world and level the playing field is through education… and fortunately, “learning” is something that human beings are generally good at.  Now, having access to information is core to learning… and information is exactly what Wikipedia offers, providing the most open, free and accessible window to knowledge in the world:  for you and everyone else.

Let’s all work together to help Wikipedia grow and improve people’s lives around the world.  Let’s invest in our collective future… what are you waiting for?

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Ever since we started Streema, we knew that sooner or later, we would need to go mobile - actually, Maxwell Smart did exactly that with his “shoe phone” decades ago.

Over the past year, more and more mobile users have been coming to our site to listen to radio – and these same users have been requesting a Streema application for their mobile devices. We’re thinking we should do something about it!

The mobile options today are so many, with platforms such as the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry…  choosing between stand-alone (native) apps vs web applications, it’s not easy to pick the right one!  Some people even recommend that we develop something that works for all devices. Anyway, right now the only thing that we’re 100% sure of is that there’s enough evidence that radio is and will be consumed more and more while you’re in a car, going out for a run, or anywhere away from home.

So, we are still trying to figure out our next move in the mobile space and here YOU can help us. :) We’ve prepared a short survey that you can answer anonymously. Every second of your time can go a loooong way for us!

Once again, we’re REALLY happy that you are a Streema user. Thanks for belonging to our community!

The Streema Team

At Streema, we’re a community that celebrates a spectacular medium called radio.

We’re not the only ones, though, since thousands of musicians and artists, ranging from rock to pop, metal to folk and even jazz have also celebrated radio.  There is no doubt this medium has influenced music, people, culture… and pretty much our entire society in the past decades.

So, today, we bring you some of the most popular songs in history that bands such as Queen, Autograph and Rush have dedicated to radio.  Hope you enjoy them!

Radio Ga Ga – Queen

Radio Waves – Roger Waters

Radio – Robbie Williams

Video Killed the Radio Star – Buggles

Turn Up The Radio – Autograph

Radio – The Corrs

The Spirit Of Radio – Rush

Which one is your favorite?  Are we missing any great songs?  If so, please let us know – we’d love to add them too!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Streema is all about radio. Stations are the main medium where people listen to music, talk or sport shows… without these, Streema wouldn’t have a reason to exist.

So, daily, we receive large amounts of requests through our Radio Request Form for stations that we don’t yet have in our directory. The work required to add each one is very time consuming and hard to scale, so every once in a while we improve the process we use internally to do this work.  Today is a big step forward in that direction.

Starting now, the Radio Request Form will require more station-related data in comparison to how it was before.  Even though this might mean a little more work for you – i.e. the person that requests the station – this way we all help create a more accurate, reliable and enjoyable Streema experience. We encourage you to continue requesting all the stations you don’t find in our Radio Directory.  Thanks!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

PS: Yes, we know we many of you have requested stations that haven’t been added yet; please, be patient, we’ll upload them all for sure.

Every once in a while, we have a “Before and After” moment in Streema’s development – and today, we’ve got one of those. From now on, when playing any station on the Streema.com website, our website’s player will open in a separate window, as it currently does on our popular Facebook application.  We understand that many of you are probably thinking “So what’s the big deal?”, but this is a change that will help us build a better Streema and we’ll explain how in the paragraphs below.

One of the features that we’ve traditionally been very proud of was our embedded player, since it allowed users to navigate Streema without the stream getting cut off.  But this meant that there were tradeoffs to be made in terms of loading time, usability, search engine crawleability, availability of station information, etc.  At this point, it made sense for us to not make those tradeoffs anymore, and while it’s difficult to explain all the pros and cons in a single blog post, here’s a quick summary of how users will benefit:

• A site that is more in line with what’s usually experienced on the web – for example, players usually open in a different window on most media sites and the URL of the page you are visiting usually appears on the browser’s address bar!

• Station stream won’t stop if you happen to click on an ad on our website – this was important because many ad networks will not open up in a separate window.

• Much faster site, in particular for first time users.  Many people will be reeeeally happy about this.

• Better and more complete radio station information at your finger tips, specifically located in our website’s player, and allowing for more interactivity in the future – at least that’s what the plan is!  :)

We know there will be some of you that will miss our embedded player, but we do hope you understand this big change and maybe eventually you will come to enjoy it.  We worked hard in the past with our embedded player (you can read more here and here), but we think it’s time to take Streema to another level, and we believe this will help us build the foundation to get there.

Do note that if anything is not working as you expected, please let us know, as your feedback is really important for us.

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Today we are reeeeaaally happy to announce we’ve released the first version of the Streema Widget!!  This has been one of the most requested features, so we hope you really enjoy it!

The widget enables anybody to grab a simple piece of code from our site and bring radio into your blog, website or social profile. In order to play a radio, it calls up a pop-up player (very similar to the one used in our application for Facebook Pages), so that people can continue browsing your site while enjoying a great station chosen by you.

Check out how it works right here in this blog post for Radio Orbital (to grab the code for this station, go here). If you want to select another radio station, just go to our radio directory, go to a station’s profile, and once there, click on “Get this Radio Widget”.

Free Online Radio Stations

Radio Orbital

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Grab this widget | Other radios

developed by

Although we know this is a basic version, we want to let you know that we’d still love to launch a wider family of widgets, where you’ll be able to customize the color, dimension, and appearance.  Remember, the more feedback you give us about this, the better it will get. :)

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Much has been written and said about Twitter during the past year.  For those who don’t know, Twitter is an information network that enables its users to post messages of up to 140 characters and share “what’s happening right now”.

The service provides real-time information from people all over the world and interestingly enough, it has been used in many situations:  ranging from emergencies, to political campaigns, to even business opportunities.  In many cases, Twitter helps generate reliable information, assistance, and activism – good examples are the way it was used during Haiti’s earthquake and last year’s Iranian elections.

Today, we are talking about it here at Streema because there has been a lot of buzz related to our website on Twitter recently, particularly after the Jonas Brothers appeared on Radio Disney‘s studios – you can check it out here!

While we’re at it, make sure to follow our latest news over there too!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Tomorrow, March 17th, will be St. Patrick’s Day!  Honoring the most recognized patron saint of Ireland, we’ll turn this post green right now. :)

Although St. Patrick’s is an Irish celebration, over time it has become a world wide event since it is also celebrated in countries like Argentina, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, the UK and the United States, among many others.

To fully enjoy this event, of course, we specially recommend listening to Irish music stations, for example:

• All Irish Radio
• Live Ireland 1
• RTÉ Radio 1

Additionally, check out these tribute stations for Irish bands U2 and The Cranberries:

• Radio U2
• Cranberries Radio

That’s all for now.  If you still don’t have plans for tomorrow, we suggest you head to the nearest Irish pub – everyone’s Irish on March 17th. :D

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

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