Radium 2.7 running on Mac OS X 10.6 |
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| Developer(s) | CatPig Studios Inc. |
|---|---|
| Initial release | February 10, 2009 |
| Operating system | Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later |
| Type | Media player |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www.catpigstudios.com/radium/ |
Radium is a proprietary Internet radio player application, used for listening to internet radio streams. It emphasizes a minimalist user interface. The application does not have a main window, instead opting to provide the entire user interface through its main menu. Users can either listen to Radium's built-in selection of internet radio networks, or add their own networks provided that the their stream URL's are known. The program has been praised for its unobtrusiveness, low system resource usage, and intuitive user interface, but has also been criticized for its lack of recording functionality as of version 2.5.1[1][2][3][4].
Radium is available as a free 30-day trial for Mac OS X, after which users are required to buy a license for $24.95 USD to continue using the program; updates are free for all users.
Radium was initially released as an XM Radio Online player, and quickly gained popularity[5] among Mac XM Radio Online listeners, due to the platform's poor support for the Windows Media Audio codec, and the program's simple user interface in comparison with XM's web-based player (which requires Mac users to download a browser plugin before listening).
Starting with version 2.0, the developers added support for bookmarks, and expanded Radium's network coverage. Since version 2.4.1, Radium automatically downloads new radio network descriptions (whenever they become available) from the developer's server, thus making the network update process transparent to the user. The ability to import channels from media URLs was added in version 2.5[6].