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Internet radio comes in a few forms and through a few players. One form is Microsoft style streaming files . Another are the Real Player type of files. There are Quicktime file formats of Internet Radio. Additionaly there are playlists of mp3 files such as the ones that shoutcast and Winamp use.

Getting the right players and the file associations set up and keeping the associations right can be a pain. It would be nice if Internet sound was just sound and would play without all the mess. If our phones and TV sets and non-Internet radios were like this they would only work 30 something percent of the time.

(see our general page on file association and return here)

As a further example let us look at the general Windows Control Panel method of managing file association. Go to your Control Panel/Folder Options.

Then examine the File Types tab/list where file associations are maintained...

Look at the above screen capture. The .pls file type is highlighted in the details for PLS extension it says Opens with Winamp. This is the only important extension needed to make Winamp work with most of Shoutcast content. If this was set up incorrectly change this by clicking on the Change button and switch the extension PLS to Winamp.

This may or may not do the trick let us look at the Winamp Preferences menu...

In the Winamp Preferences there is a list of file types...

As you can see there are a lot of file types the central one of importance to Internet Radio through Winamp and Shoutcast is the .pls file type. You could only associated Winamp with that single file type and get good results.

I have a fairly important one to show here that concerns Internet Video which may contain sound or not it is the .avi format that Camtasia produces. There is a free player for .avi files that is small and deals with this well. Let us return here to the Windows Control Panel Folder Options and File Types to check if .avi files are associated with Camplayer the free player I mentioned...

This is the case, so this should default the .avi files to open with Camplayer.

If you like theWiamp Player selection of Web Radio see this page specific to making Winamp and Shoutcast work together

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