Chances are the biggest difference between BlackLight Radio and your local radio stations is that you have a clock radio, maybe a shower radio, a radio in the kitchen, a radio in the living room, a radio in the den, a radio in your car, and maybe a radio for taking with you.

This post is an attempt to equalize the playing field for us a bit.

Do you have a smart phone (an iPhone or an Android)? If you do, you have BlackLight Radio almost anywhere you can get an internet connection. Let’s start with getting your phone up to speed!

If you have an iPhone, you’ll want to go to the App Store. If you have an Android, you’ll want to go to the Google Play store.

My favorite app, and the easiest way to get BlackLight Radio playing on your phone, is the TuneIn app. It’s free, although a “pro” version is also available for 99 cents that removes the banner ads and gives you some additional features. The choice is yours; both are GREAT players.

When you launch the app, click the search bar and type in “BlackLight Radio.” Chances are by the time you get “BlackLight” typed in, you’ll see our purple and black logo and our slogan “All of the 80s, all of the time!”, so go ahead and click the entry.

Once the stream starts playing, look for the “heart” symbol (it’s near the top right on the Android app). Click the heart, and you’ll be able to add BlackLight Radio to your favorites list.

Now when you launch the app, all you have to do is click “Favorites” and click our entry. Our 128 kbps stereo stream will begin shortly!

There are other apps which will play BlackLight Radio. Shoutcast has an app for the iPhone, but I haven’t had a chance to test it and Shoutcast’s app on my home blu-ray player hasn’t impressed me so far… use it if it works, but if it doesn’t, try TuneIn.

You may have limited or metered bandwidth on your phone. If you would like to listen but use less bandwidth, you’ll want to try tuning in to our AAC+ stream which, for the moment, is a little more challenging but far from impossible.

If you’re on the iPhone, then iTunes should automatically start on our AAC+ 64 kbps stream.

On Android it’s a bit trickier. A Online Radio will play our stream if you install it and then launch our stream from the LoudCity webpage (through the play button on our page), but the player doesn’t seem to be as solid with our stream as I would like. (As we speak, I’m trying to connect to our AAC+ stream and it’s not connecting, while it popped right up on my PC desktop.)

Sadly, when I popped in our direct listening address, the stream started immediately… but I can’t tell you what the direct stream address is because of copyright laws. (I’m serious!)

I’ve tried to figure out a way to launch it from Shoutcast’s page, but it tries to pop up a window which then fails to load. This is something I’ll continue to work on and research.

NEXT POST: it’s on my phone; what are my listening choices?