Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

I have been getting many questions & comments about my two posts on how to listen to Israeli radio stations on the iPhone and iPod Touch using the FStream app (here). That’s the “price” I had to pay for being ranked first on google for queries like “israeli radio on iphone”. Hopefully this post will provide answers to many of the questions.

Recently a new free application was released to the App Store called “Visual Radio” (download link). It was developed in Israel by Unicell and it offers the capability to listen to over 10 stations using a clean and elegant user interface.

Unlike the FSTream solution which requires configuring the radio stations’ streams urls into the app and changing the urls whenever those change, Visual Radio comes pre-configured with many radio stations which leads to an easy “install and play” experience. A few stations are still missing and I hope the Unicell team there will add them soon. Other nice features include:

1. Radio Dial that lets you preview what song is being played in a station before actually switching to it – big time saver

2. Displaying artist and song names

3. Song’s lyrics (when available)

4. Programming for every station

Kudos for the Unicell team for a great app. One small tip to the developers – change the app name to say something like “Visual Israeli Radio” so people who search iTunes will be able to easily find it.

Posted via email from jaymeydad’s posterous

Update (1/26/2010):
There is a new iPhone app that eliminates the need to configure FStream. Read about it here.

Original post starts here:
According to Google Analytics this old post of mine is one of the most popular on this blog. It is time to refresh the list, add new Israeli radio stations streams and fix the broken ones.

The updated list below uses a stream url structure from fm1.co.il. Simply launch FStream on your iPhone / iPod Touch and configure it to use the following streams. Enjoy.

Galaz -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/glz.asx

GalGalaz -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/glgltz.asx

88fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/88fm.asx

Kol Hamusica (classical music) -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/kol-hamusica.asx

Reshet Aleph -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-aleph.asx

Reshet Bet -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-bet.asx

Reshet Gimel -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-gimel.asx

Regional stations

Kol Hacampus (one of my favorites, run by students, plays plenty of alternative music) – http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/campus.asx
Radius 100fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/100fm.asx

Radio Tel Aviv 102fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/102fm.asx

Radio Lelo Hafsaka 103fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/103fm.asx

Radio Lev Hamedina -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/91fm.asx

Radio Emza Haderech -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/90fm.asx

Radio Kol Rega -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/96fm.asx

Radio Jerusalem -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/101fm.asx

Radio Haifa  -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/radio-haifa.asx

Kol Ramat Hasharon – http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/kol-ramat-hasharon.asx

The past weekend in Los Angeles was all about Israeli music. As part of celebrating 60 years of independence to the state of Israel, a few Israeli artists came to town to perform.

The first concert I saw was by one my favorite Israeli band, Hadag Nachash (and if you insist to translate it to English — “the Fish Snake”). Hadag performed at Temple Sinai in Los Angeles at what seems to be a well kept secret among the people who live in the city. It was a fairly intimate show but an amazing one!

I stood right next to the stage, took plenty of photos (sorry for the poor quality – that’s the iPhone to blame), recorded a few videos and had a great time.

Here’s the opening song – Lotus. Two additional videos can be found here and here.

The second concert took place the following day at the world famous Kodak Theatre which was packed with excited crowd. It was an impressive and well organized event, with a few speakers (Kirk Douglas was one of them), dance shows and live performance by four leading Israeli artists and bands: Idan Reichel, Achinoam Nini (Noa), Rami Klenstein and Habanot Nechama (young, fresh — a great surprise for me).

Here’s Habanot performing Hachnisini, a classic song written by Israel’s national poet, Hayyim Nahman Bialik.

And more Israeli artists are coming to town. This coming Sunday, at Woodley park there will be a huge event to celebrate Israel’s independence day with a few artists, and last, but not least, another pop/rock legendary band, Mashina will be in town on May 27. I am going to be in both events.

What a great month for Israel music lovers.