• WHAT: Thousands of streamed radio stations, free, on your iPhone
• WHY: Sometimes you can’t store enough music or want to listen to something live
• COST: Zero (as long as you’ve got the AT&T prerequisite unlimited data plan)

I don’t listen the regular radio in my car - or anyplace else - much anymore. Thanks to the invention of Internet radio stations it’s easy to pick out just the kind of music you like from a distant radio station that also streams their broadcast online, or from an Internet-only station that doesn’t have a traditional transmitter, studio, etc.

But I do love my music and when I’m in the mood to listen I want to listen to music that I like. On my iPhone I’ve always got the option of listening to one of a hundreds of artists that I’ve got stored locally on my 16GB device, but, incredibly, sometimes that’s just not enough. There may be a live broadcast of something - concert, speech, sports event, etc. - that requires a radio or some way to get radio transmissions. Satellite radio is just another needless subscription and another device that needs to be dealt with - why bother when there’s an elegant, free and easy to use solution that brings thousands of Internet stations directly to your iPhone?

About a year ago I reviewed a product called “FlyTunes” that I thought was pretty cool - it also worked on the iPhone but didn’t have the elegant, finished interface that made me comfortable enough to use it all the time. There’s a new kid in town, though, that’s the son of (or sequel to, if you want to be gender-neutral) FlyTunes, and that’s FlyCast. You can get it, free, at the iTunes store HERE. If you’re into music at all, you owe it to yourself to download this brilliant, free application.

FlyTunes offers more than a thousand streamed radio stations and, in one of it’s most brilliant strokes, has set it up so that you can listen to the streamed radio station in the background. Think about it - what that means is that, just like your the iPod function on the iPhone, you can listen to music and do your other work - browse using Safari, send/receive email, check stocks - all while listening to the music. Why other apps don’t have this function is a mystery to me but I’m sure glad that this one does - I use it all the time.

The app also serves as a kind of TiVo/DVR for your iPhone, too - it allows you to pause live radio, jump back to the beginning of a talk radio show by using their “Top of the Hour” function and much more. There are great graphics, too, while the music is playing and, as you would expect, it interfaces perfectly with the phone portion of your iPhone, pausing when a call comes in and then resuming when the call is completed.

There are lots of music apps and tools for the iPhone and I do use - and have written about - several. I’m an avid user of SimplifyMedia and Pandora, which both serve different, but very useful purposes for iPhone use. FlyCast, however, is like having free satellite radio on a device you’re already carrying around. What could be better than that?