5 Sweet Ways to Listen to Your Favorite Music From Anywhere

There are dozens of good ways to listen to music on your iPhone. But, if you are interested in finding new music or seeing what else is happening in the music world, there is no better way than radio. Internet radio is well-established and there are many different apps for listening to web-based stations from the iPhone. We’ve rounded up five of the best apps for listening to music — even while there is no radio for miles.

Pandora is a free personalized music service and one of the most well-known around the world. By giving Pandora a thumbs up or thumbs down vote on the song it played, you can “train” it to be increasingly accurate in finding musical selections to fit your taste. The iPhone app complements your Pandora account and lets you create your own stations of music and share them with your friends. It is free but has a listening limit of 40 hours per month.

Slacker is another free service, one of Pandora’s biggest competitors. It works in much the same way. Slacker is said to have better audio quality, allows for caching, and has a huge, almost unlimited library. Unlike Pandora it allows for unlimited skipping over songs you don’t want to listen to, and unlimited listening time.

is a social music site that has been around longer than Pandora and is another big competitor. It is immensely popular, and has advantages similar to Slacker such as unlimited skipping and unlimited listening time. The iPhone app lets you into your account to listen to your favorite music and share them on the site. One unique feature is the “On Tour” button which appears if the artist you’re listening to is currently on tour. It brings up a calendar with the dates, venues, and ticket purchase info. It is free.

Tuner Internet Radio gives access to thousands of radio stations around the world, and even access to some premium stations. You need an iTunes account, and the app costs $4.99 to download. It is a nifty service, with a pleasant interface and the sound quality is said to be better than satellite radio. A fun feature is the Open GL visualizer. Tuner also allows you to use other applications on your iPhone while listening to internet radio, which is especially useful.

Sirius XM is satellite radio, made famous by Howard Stern, and is in direct competition with the terrestrial services like Pandora, Slacker, and . It has an app for the iPhone, too, and unlike the other services it provides news, weather, and radio programs other than music. The basic internet radio service is free, but to access the iPhone service, you need to upgrade to the Premium Online service which is $2.99 per month.