Streaming Media in Canada and other places outside of the U.S

Well living in Canada has issues with streaming music.  Not all applications and products are available in Canada due to copyright issues or that is what we are told, but there are ways of getting around this, but more on that later.

The first streaming product I will discuss is Pandora.  Pandora is a free app for the iPhone, but it isn't totally free.  You get 40 hours of use and then you have to pay $3.99 per month.  If you have the free version you had lots of advertisments, not a big deal if you don't look at the screen.  You can create your own stations based on the music you want to listen to.  This App can not be found in the Canadian iTunes Store.

The second streaming product is Spotify, when you sign up for this you get 48 hours of unlimited streaming, and you can listen to the whole album or choose what songs you want.  You will then get notice that you will get 30 days free, but I haven't done that.  There is a radio in this App that will continue to work.  There is a free app for your computer but it does have ads, you can pay $4.99 per month to go ad free on your computer and $9.99 to use the app on your mobile device or computer ad free.

Tunein Radio is a free and a paid App and is available in Canada, a good reason because it sucks!  It is just a bunch of radio stations.  I guess with the paid app at $4.99 says you can record the songs being played.  Once again with the free app there are advertisements.  I didn't see anywhere that I could do a search for an artist or song I wanted to listen to.  There was a selection of  interests and then you could pick the station.

Songza is a free app and is also available in Canada and it is free.  When you start up the App it goes to what is called the Concierge.  With Concierge you can choose the activity you are doing to match the music.  If you do not want to choose the Concierge you can choose Activities, Moods, Genres or Decades.  You can also type in the artist you are looking for and make a playlist.  There is a website where  you can make a play list from the music on your computer, but you won't be able to listen to your own.  You can share with friends and also see what they are listening too.

Jango Radio is available in Canada and you choose they type of music you want to listen to, but you can't choose an artist.  When you try to skip a song you get an ad and not just a pop up advertisment, but an actual video ad, doesn't happen all the time.  You give the songs a thumbs up or down.  This is still not my favourite app.

SHOUTcast is available in Canada and it isn't too bad.  You can search for an artist and it will show what station it is on and then it will start.  The quality of the sound can vary from station to station, but it shows you what the stream quality is like.  This is a free app, with small banner apps at the bottom and not very intrusive.

Now the Grand Daddy of them all in my opinion is iTunes Radio.  This isn't available unless you have a U.S iTunes account and also is in beta format on iOS Beta and you need to be a developer.  You can make playlists, choose the artist you want and similiar artists will play.  There are ads, but while in Beta they are not played very often and when they are played it is only about artists on iTunes.

Now you are saying this is all fine and dandy if you live in the U.S, but what about us living here in Canada?  Well you have to make yourself an iTunes account in the U.S store.  Set up U.S iTunes account outside of United States

I hope this article has helped you in streaming audio on your iOS devices.