MusicMantra

Listening to music streamed online by various radio stations usually requires two things, at least: a player capable of reading such streams and the URL address of the broadcast. However, there are some specialized tools that combine these two requirements and offer users a simple means of hearing their favorite songs without having to look for any of the above.

One such utility is MusicMantra, a program that comes with a built-in list of radios and all that it takes for you to start listening the nice tracks is a single click on any of the stations. The radios are organized by country, or region of the world, so you can opt for broadcasts from Europe, France, Germany, India and USA.

The simple and fun interface has an evident drawback, namely the fact that it cannot be run in window mode or minimized like most of the other Windows applications. To get MusicMantra to sit in the taskbar, you will have to use the old 'Show Desktop' shortcut (Win + D) or use the 'Alt + Tab' switch to bring forth another running program and then press the 'Show Desktop' button.

Insofar as the playback functions and commands are concerned, MusicMantra only offers a volume control slider and a 'Stop' button. This means that you can only adjust the loudness and halt the stream if necessary.

Inside each radio player window you will find a timer that shows the total amount of time spent on the currently loaded station. A rather fun enhancement that is visible only when the music is playing is the animated bar chart visualization from the main window of MusicMantra.

Overall, the application can offer you a couple of hours of good music if you manage to find a station to your liking. Easy to use and with a clean interface, this online radio player has some shortcomings, but nothing that would make it utterly undesirable.