There is no shortage of ways to enjoy music — from old-school CDs to conventional radio stations, Sirius XM satellite radio to MP3 players. There’s also Internet radio — a category that includes streams provided by radio broadcasters and standalone streaming music services like Accuradio.com.
Then there’s the increasingly wide array of Web-based “music discovery” engines such as iLike, CBS’s Last.fm, Slacker Radio, and Pandora. I especially like Pandora, a service that customizes streams based on a user’s preferences. I use Pandora for listening to music at home or in the office, though the free service also runs on wireless devices like the iPhone, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, and phones running Microsoft Windows Mobile.
Built-In Pandora Support
It’s that affinity for Pandora that turned me on to Livio Radio, a simple, standalone Internet radio that connects to Web radio stations and is designed to work specifically with Pandora. Made by Livio, the $149 Livio Radio comes with support for Pandora built in, and connects to some 11,000 other Internet streams via Wi-Fi or an Ethernet connection. The compact, table-top unit has a single speaker and a large round knob that controls the volume and activates an on-screen menu.
Setup was surprisingly simple. With other radios, I have struggled to get the radio to give the network password in the correct format. But I had practically no difficulty getting the Livio Radio on my Wi-Fi network. I did encounter a hiccup pairing the radio with my Pandora account, however. To do this you must sign in at the Livio Web site, give your Pandora account information, the serial number of the radio, and a unique string of characters called a registration ID. The first weekend I had the radio, I was unable to register and was told to try later. I set it aside for…