Radio—particularly local radio—may seem like a dead media, but for many users, it's still one of the greatest ways to get both information and entertainment, particularly while in the car. Perhaps making things worse for radio is its overall lack of information. There aren't programming guides for radio. It's impossible to tell what's on when, and trying to find certain breeds of music can often be difficult. RadioSearchEngine.com, meanwhile, looks to change all that by offering a complete search engine for radio, especially online radio.

In the past, there have been directories of radio stations. But RadioSearchEngine—now available in beta—offers up substantially more than that of straight directories. Not only can RadioSearchEngine offer up searches by artist, but also by song, by genre, and even by show for those who favor a little talk radio. What's more, all of the searched content can be accessed directly online.

For instance, not only is it possible to go hunting up, say, Katy Perry or Metallica songs, but it's also possible to see a few subgenres that aren't commonly available on local radio. Not only could I find listings for Judas Priest and Rammstein, which doesn't exactly get a lot of airplay in my neck of the woods, but I'm also fond of a subgenre that doesn't commonly get aired: smooth jazz. RadioSearchEngine had most everything from Dave Koz to Michael Buble and then some. Anything that was playing that I was interested in hearing was easily available from the big red “Play” button—the standard right-pointing triangle—at the bottom of the screen.

As for how it works, that's even more interesting. The program will actually scan thousands of stations—I saw entries for most everywhere from Tampa Bay to a station I believe was from Poland—to show what's on, and updates that list accordingly. A few minutes of watching the smooth jazz listings saw regular changes, including identifications for “Station Break” moments. There's even a recommendation engine included to branch off where necessary; after all, not every song is playing somewhere at the exact moment someone wants to hear it.

There are still some holes to address, which isn't surprising since this is a beta version. One, I found no way to modify just what “local” meant. Those taking a trip elsewhere who want to use RadioSearchEngine to figure out what area stations are going to have online equivalents will be, largely, out of luck for the time being. Not a huge problem, but still. Also there's the overall issue of usefulness; how valuable is a service like RadioSearchEngine when users can for the most part jump to any one song desired on services like YouTube or others?

Still, though, this is a much more controllable, and more customizable, approach to online radio. While it may not solve every problem out there involved with finding and enjoying music by itself, it's likely to make a fine way to fill in many common gaps and make the service a lot more available for users.