FStream

The iPhone is an ideal platform for listening to online radio stations. In this article, I explain everything you’ll ever need to know about all this. You’ll learn how radio stations can be listened to on even non-jailbroken iPhones, without any hacks to play stations in the background; I also present a very thorough comparison of currently available third-party radio software.

First and foremost, let’s take a closer look at the built-in, out-of-the-box radio support.

1. Built-in capabilities: QuickTime

All versions of the iPhone (and, of course, the iPod Touch – from now on, I refer to all these as “iPhone”), under OS3, already have support for playing back some (not all!) possible radio stream types.