Drool Radio

Call me crazy, but internet radio is pretty much the same no matter where you’re getting it. The content, that is… it’s the same! With the exception of apps like Pandora and Boombox that let you personalize your own “station”, straight-up internet radio is always just internet radio.  There’s a gazillion internet radio stations out there, and it seems like there are just as many internet radio iPhone apps. So what makes one different from the other?

The answer is partially in features, but in my mind it’s mostly in the app’s style, just like if you’re buying an actual radio at a store. Do you want the radio that looks cool and has high-quality components, or do you want the one that looks like a cheap piece of crap? Drool Radio is the one that looks cool. It’s very retro, very slick, and has just about everything you could ask for in a pure internet radio app.

On the surface, Drool seems to have been built on the notion that less is more. It looks like an old-timey transistor radio with a big tuning wheel in the center for cycling through your favorite stations, station info is placed above the wheel, and overall the whole thing looks pretty hot. The slick factor gets kicked up a notch with button sound effects taken from a Marantz cassette deck, and it gets better as you start to drill down into the massive variety of genres and locales that DroolApps.com has built into this unit.

Stations can be selected by searching or browsing for genre or location, and once you find something you dig you can add it to the Favorites above the tuning wheel. To set the station you’re currently listening to as a favorite you just hold down the Stations button for three seconds, or you can hit the blue arrow icon when you find the station in search/browse. If a particular station you want isn’t one of the 1,400+ stations already listed, you can add it manually if you know the station’s URL.

Drool Radio also comes with an alarm clock that lets you wake up to your fav internet radio station. Because time in Drool is only available in 24-hour format (ie: 16:00 instead of 4 pm) you need to make sure you scroll the hour spinner far enough to get it right. Once you have that done, you can lock your iPhone and the alarm will go off when you tell it to.

Unlike Pandora, Drool seems to work just fine on 3G and Edge. I spent the better part of an hour walking my dog with Drool Radio and there were times when certain radio stations wouldn’t start playing, but when the streams got going they stayed pretty consistent.

My only warning with this app is that you may need to restart your iPhone after installing it. My first attempt at using Drool was promptly met with a crash, but after a restart it worked perfectly.

A lot of internet radio apps are free or just a dollar, so I’m a little surprised by Drool’s relatively-large $5 pricetag. It’s a great app and definitely worth paying for, but if the price of the full version is too rich for your blood I’d highly recommend taking the free version for a spin.

iTunes Link – Drool Radio
Version 1.2
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2