NightAire said:
Very valid question!!! Only those of us who are curious and wanting to know how the station does it and what mechanism they are using would do that over and over, every time. If I go to a station website and I think I would like to return and hear them serveral times over the next few days, or maybe on a daily basis at a certain time of the day, I do what you just described the first time and while I am there I copy the link (on a simple site just a CNTRL-C will do) and I keep a FOLDER on my home page and I create an icon in that folder and past the link there. Next time I want to hear that station... or that INTERNET ONLY station, I just click on the icon. No browser, no webpage, no clicking on a pop-up, etc. If it is the one station I want to hear primarily, I don't even put it in a folder... just put the icon on the desktop.
Now comes the philosophical questions. Some stations don't want me to do that. They want everyone to have to open the website and use THEIR player which keeps displaying ads that they are selling to sponsors. They force me to do it their way. Stations to protect their revenue stream may have to have at least a minimal screen presence. The last time I looked at CBS stations, my simple link would not work. You have to use THEIR player app so the ads will display. I have never checked out a I-heart-radio Clear Channel station but I suspect they are playing that same game.
The other answer is you buy the little Wi-Fi radio that looks like it ought to be a clock radio and you preset your favorite internet audio sites as presets. They can be a combination of terrestrial station streams, pure-play Internet programmers or Pandora or NPR or whatever.
My adult daughter has her two or three favorite stations set up on her i-Fone the same way. Click and play. No matter where her work takes her, her favorite Milwaukee station goes with her. She spent a week with us recently and did the tele-commute from my house, and her i-Fone was pumping out Milwaukee night and day.
For people who have a job where they buy your cell-phone service including Internet for you, stream away. If I wanted an i-Fone with Internet and streaming that would come right out of my pocket. It will be a cold day in hell when I pop that kind of monthly fee for a cell phone just because I want to listen to a station in Chicago down here in Appalachia.
People who are into listening to streamed stations do not go through all the push-ups you described.
