Configuring iTunes for a Slow Internet Connection

If you use a slow Internet connection, such as a dial-up account, traffic on the Internet can cause the stream of music to slow or even stop, resulting in pauses in the music, even if you choose a lower bit-rate channel, such as 32Kbps. If this is a problem for you, perform the following steps:

1. Choose Edit, Preferences (Windows) or iTunes, Preferences (Mac). The Preferences dialog box will appear.
2. Click the Advanced tab (Windows) or the Advanced icon (Mac). The Advanced pane will appear (see Figure).
3. On the Streaming Buffer Size dropdown list, choose Large. This increases the amount of buffer space used to store a stream before it actually starts to play.
4. Click OK. The dialog box will close.

Hopefully, this will eliminate any pauses in the streams to which you like to listen. If not, choose a different stream or one with a lower bit rate.

Refreshing Your Radio

When you choose the Radio source, the Action button becomes the Refresh button. When you click this, all the genres are refreshed with the latest content. If you leave the Radio source selected for a long time, you might want to click the Refresh button once in a while to see if new channels become available. (Each time you select the Radio source, it is refreshed, so you don’t need to click the Refresh button if you have recently selected the Radio source.)

Playing Your iTunes Radio

To tune in iTunes radio, perform the following steps:

1. Open iTunes and select the Radio source by clicking it. The Content pane will contain the list of genres available to you. The column headings will be updated to be appropriate to the content. For example, you will see Stream, Bit Rate, and Comment.
2. Click the expansion triangle for the genre in which you are interested (see Figure). iTunes will connect to the Internet to update the list of channels for the genre you selected, and the genre will expand. You will see the various channels it contains. Look at the stream name, bit rate, and comment for the channels to decide which you want to try. Usually, the comment will provide a description of the kind of music the stream contains.
3. To play a channel, select it and click Play or double-click the stream you want to hear. The channel will begin to play (this will be instantaneous if you have a fast connection to the Net, or there will be a slight delay if you use a dial-up connection). Just like when you play a song on a CD, the speaker icon will appear next to the channel to which you are listening. Also just like when you listen to a CD, information about the channel will appear in the Information window. This includes the stream name, the song currently playing, and the Web site with which the channel is associated.

You can use the Volume slider to change the volume level and the Stop button to stop playback. The Rewind and Fast Forward buttons work a little differently than you might expect. Rather than moving you in the selected stream, they instead take you to the previous or next stream, which makes sense when you think about each stream as being like a track on a CD.