With all the recent talk about radio stations and music, I thought it might be a good time to highlight some alternatives to terrestrial and satellite radio.

No, not websites for listening to music, but rather, websites that offer you the opportunity to become your own Internet radio broadcaster.

Broadcast

Shoutcast lets you stream music directly from your computer to Internet listeners by installing a plugin for your MP3 player. WinAmp is the recommended player of choice.

Fair warning:You are still bound by the licensing terms of the music in your library, and that means most of your music is probably off-limits.

www.shoutcast.com

Podcast

Beyond traditional (on the Internet at least) streaming audio, the growing trend in Internet media is podcasting, which is essentially publishing pre-recorded audio and video files that subscribers can automatically download with free software like Apple’s iTunes. And no, you don’t need an iPod.

You can find podcasts related to music, sports, talk radio, etc., and the overwhelming majority of podcasts are free.

When you’re ready to start your own podcast, be sure to sign up at Gcast, an all in one podcasting website that offers, hosting, broadcast-safe music (through GarageBand.com), and all the tools you need to create and publish your own podcast. And of course, its free!

Now get to work and start cranking out those podcasts. Local radio is only getting worse by the minute.

www.gcast.com

It works like this: Specify an artist or song to start with and Pandora selects similar songs to add to your playlist. You tell it what you like and what you don’t like and Pandora customizes your playlists (called stations) accordingly.

Add different stations for different types of music. One last thing, Pandora is free!

www.pandora.com