One of my favorite Internet radio stations is Jimmy Bufffett's Radio Margaritaville. It is available on Sirius/XM and also streamed from thie web site at radiomargaritaville.com. It's the "music" that plays in every Margaritaville Cafe restaurant, by the way, and it's streamed live from Orlando's Margaritaville Cafe at Universal Studios. (It also live streams all of Jimmy Buffett's concerts... it's a great resource just for that!)
Unfortunately, they don't offer iPhone/iPad compatible streams on that web site.
Apple's iTunes has Internet radio stations, though. And Radio Margaritaville is one of them.
Although iTunes doesn't sync radio with iOS devices, it's still possible to get Radio Margaritaville onto your iPhone/iPad from iTunes, and here's how...
- On your Mac/PC, run iTunes and find the station in iTunes (Radio Margaritaville can be found under "Reggae").
- Use "Get Info" to display the station information. You are interested in the first tab, by the way.
- Right click (CTRL-click if you have a one-button mouse on your Mac), and select "Copy URL." This will put the URL of the station into the cut/copy buffer.
- Get that URL onto your iDevice (email works wonderfully... just paste into the body of an email message)
- On your iDevice, get the URL (from your email, for instance). Tap it to open the URL in Safari
- You should be listening to your favorite laid-back island singer. If you turn your iDevice off, it will play in the background. This is great if you have some good stereo speakers hooked up to your device.
- Before you close the Safari tab, you'll probably want to save the link by using the "action" button on Safari's toolbar and selecting "Add Bookmark" or "Add to Home Screen."
Since Mobile Safari is quite capable of playing Internet Radio, it's a wonder why Apple still chooses to not sync Radio Stations with their iDevices.
Bon Appetit!
