Toronto Radio on the iPhone

A couple of weeks ago, with the development work of StreamTheWorld, Canadian media company Corus Entertainment released a free iPhone app that allows you to tune in to 52 of their Canada-wide radio stations (both AM and FM). I only caught wind of this the other day, and decided to give it a whirl.

Toronto stations include Corus Entertainment's Q107, 102.1 The Edge, and AM 640, but you can also listen to their live feeds for stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Quebec City, and more. A small ad banner link is displayed once your station is chosen, but it's not terribly intrusive and delivered tastefully enough.

Sound quality isn't that hot (I'm guessing 32 kbps?). It has that flat, lo-fi, highly-compressed sound to it for sure. It's definitely not the "outstanding sound quality" promised in the press release, but considering that it's free (and streaming), we can't really expect much there. The stream is robust on Wi-Fi, and based on my limited use of the app on 3G, it seems to be able to hold he stream there too.

That said, the true test will be to see how the stream holds up outside of 3G network range. If it does stream well on the Edge network, this little app could make for a great backup when on road trips and the aerial station starts to lose fidelity and cutting out on the car radio.

Now if only we could convince a certain quality radio station to follow suit with a similar iPhone app for their stations, it would make for a much more pleasant, informative bus ride/walk to work.