In a word, yes, provided you tend to listen on your device’s tinny little speakers. In other words, for background music and companionship – we’re not talking CD quality here, not even stereo.

In a word, yes, provided you tend to listen on your device’s tinny little speakers. In other words, for background music and companionship – we’re not talking CD quality here, not even stereo. How much of this is due to technical issues and bandwidth constraints and how much is due to the legal situation regarding the streaming of quality, copyrighted music, is up for debate, but it’s probably a bit of both.

Still, you get crackle and hiss-free, monophonic rock music for free, 24 hours a day, which can’t be bad. I say ‘rock’ music because Absolute tend to steer clear of ‘pop’, ‘rap’ and so on – this is the sort of music that anyone over about 35 (like me!) will appreciate, I suspect. Each of the three stations is selected with a simple ‘Tune’ button and cuts in after a couple of seconds, rather abruptly – surprising given that Absolute Radio’s audio fades out smoothly when you switch away from the application, but then maybe this latter behaviour is more down to the OS than the work of the programmers.

So yes, you lose the radio stream when you switch away to another iPhone application. Even with OS 3.0, this remains a huge downside of the iPhone ‘s software – if you want Absolute Radio, then you have to keep this in the foreground – making your iPhone the most expensive AM radio you’ve ever seen!

With Absolute Radio being a commercial station, you also get occasional radio ads, but again this is fair enough when you’re getting the music for free. There were no audio glitches here but the ‘album art’ often failed to appear – doubtless the system will become slicker in time.

If you’re interested in Internet radio, you might also want to check out the iPhone apps: Wunder Radio (commercial, but worth it), Virgin Radio and 95.8 Capital FM.

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Absolute Radio