Appletell reviews the Radium radio player for Mac OS X

Developer: CatPig Studios
System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.8 or better, Internet connection
Review Computer: 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, 4GB DDR3 RAM
Processor Compatibility: Universal
Price: $16, 30 day trial available
Availability: Now

What does Radium do? Well, according to the CatPig Studio site:

Say hello to our internet radio player. It sits in your menu bar and stays out of your way. No browser necessary. And it just works.

It couldn’t be put much better. Radium doesn’t have a dock icon and doesn’t have all sorts of interface windows. It consists of simply the main interface (see below) and the preferences pane. To use it, you simply type in what you are looking for (a specific station, a genre, a title, etc) and the list in the application is almost instantly filtered to what you’re looking for. To play a station, you simply click it. Clicking the star next to it adds it to your favorite stations to make them easier to find later, which can be accessed simply by hitting the star next to the search bar.

In terms of station selection, Radium is fantastic. It has all sorts of local channels from where I live as well as stations that I never even knew existed. For instance, I’ve been listening to TWiT Talk Radio a lot using Radium, and it’s pretty slick. Stopping and starting the stream is as easy as clicking the menu bar icon and then the menu item associated with these functions. However, you also have the ability to set up global keyboard shortcuts for this functionality as well as others (see image below). Basically, Radium keeps the interface nice and simple while providing the perfect amount of customization and features you would want with nothing that’s too much. It really is great.

Even over my wireless network on my MacBook Pro, the quality of the stream was perfectly clear and never skipped during my use with it. It just works. I’d recommend Radium to anyone who’s interested in simply getting all sorts of radio stations on their Mac. While Pandora and Last.fm may be nice for more customized streams, Radium certainly has it covered when it comes to the streaming radio stations available on the web. If you’re in this market, get this app.

Appletell Rating:

Buy Radium