Few pleasures are better than getting into your car and locking yourself away with your tunes.
Unlike in previous eras, we no longer have to fumble with CD cases or tape cassettes before we start and get locked into a specific album for the entire drive.
The wonders of streaming mean we have almost the entire history of music at our fingertips.
But that vast selection comes with choice paralysis, and there’s always the chance you’ll get the itch to switch partway through your drive. And now it’s worse, because you know you can, and it’s easy to do so.
It gets old after a while. Which is why I’ve turned to another Android Auto app for my drives, because it offers modern conveniences, along with the joy of radio.
RadioShake brings back the golden age of radio
Just choose a genre and off you go
Once upon a time, getting music in your car meant tuning into the right radio station. Times have changed, and we’ve evolved to the point where we can listen to basically anything on our daily drive.
As a result, the humble radio station has been lost.
Sure, a radio station doesn’t let you choose exactly what you want to listen to. Nor did it care if you wanted to skip a particular track or go back to a favorite you just listened to. It played songs, and that was it.
This is, technically, inferior to streaming and the other types of music apps we have now. But we’ve also lost a lot of the charm.
Radio is a great way to discover songs you might love, and while you’ll often hear a lot of the old favorites at the same time, it feels different when it’s on the radio.
Like a movie on terrestrial TV, a big hit feels special when it pops up on the radio. Because you don’t pick it, it feels more exclusive, and you’re more likely to enjoy it.
Maybe it’s just me, but radio feels fun and engaging in a way that streaming cannot. And that’s why I’ve moved over to RadioShake for my Android Auto listening.
At its core, RadioShake is just a radio app. But it’s a radio app with a vast number of options, from national to international, across a massive range of genres.
Drum and bass? It’s got it. Old-time classics? Check. It even has some radio stations for gaming tunes. It also has a decent collection of podcast feeds, if you want to listen to something different.
We haven’t touched on the biggest reason why listening to a radio station is better while driving. It’s because it’s better for your concentration.
It’s better to drive without distractions
The fewer choices, the better
Driving isn’t necessarily a difficult skill, but it is a skill, and like all skills, it functions better if you’re not distracted.
For all its advantages, streaming music tends to be distracting. Even after you’ve finished selecting an album or playlist, you have a constant tug on your concentration.
Do you want to skip this song? Maybe you’ve remembered this album isn’t very good past this song, or another playlist would be better? Or you might want to swap to another genre entirely.
You have the ability and power to make those changes, and that ability will nag at you the entire time.
RadioShake ends that by letting you put on a radio station and keep it on.
Sure, you might want to change the station every now and again, but with that as your only decision, it’s easier to keep your attention where it needs to be — keeping your big metal death machine where it needs to be.
RadioShake offers a few nice features that help to keep your mind on the road.
Smart Station Hopping skips to another similar radio station when the ads hit, so you don’t have to deal with the worst part of legacy radio.
You can also add custom streams to the app if your favorite radio station isn’t already included.
It’s not perfect. I would love there to be a way to control it with a voice assistant like Gemini. I know that flies in the face of not wanting distractions, but when I want to change, I’d like it to be easier than poking at a screen.
RadioShake is worth downloading even without Android Auto
It’s a great app by itself
I’ve been impressed by RadioShake during my time with it.
When I downloaded it, I had only intended to use it in my Android Auto setup. But at some point, it became one of my core music apps. And a big part of that comes down to the fact that it’s a good app.
Not only does it offer access to a big selection of music and radio stations, but it also has some excellent features.
The “Shake” in the name comes from your ability to shake it to grab a random radio station.
You can also use it as a radio alarm clock, a great little utility that I enjoy. It can even host your local library, so you can use it as a standard music player if you like.
All in all, RadioShake is a great little app that can snag radio stations from around the world, keeping the music flowing throughout the day. It’s a great Android Auto app and a great app in general, and it’s worth downloading.
