Complete the following sentence: "Internet radio is the best thing to happen to music since..."

(a) Jimi Hendrix got an itch on the back of his neck and decided to scratch it with his guitar.
(b) Jimmy Osmond sang about overly hairy lovers from Liverpool.
(c) Jimmy Nail was born (presumably emerging from the womb already clad in a pair of sodding 'Crocodile Shoes').

Well, whether you think that Net radio is an (a) good, (b) bad or (c) ugly thing, it's an expanding phenomenon with new streams popping up across the globe every few hours.

On the plus side, the medium offers a vast selection of stations, providing dedicated forums for even the smallest musical niches (Greatest Operas played on the Spoons, anyone?). On the downside, the streams can suffer from annoying sound glitches and drop-outs, even for those on broadband. Also, the lower bandwidth stations are fairly poor in terms of sound quality.

The other tricky issue is that realistically you need a program to locate the stations, as surfing around trying to find them is obviously pretty haphazard. That's where Webradio Deluxe comes in, as an alternative to the likes of Media Player's Radio Tuner. The program boasts several thousand stations, all categorised neatly under genre folders in a Windows Explorer style interface.

In terms of the mainstream genres, such as rock or jazz, Webradio Deluxe doesn't have a larger selection of streams than Media Player. Where it covers more ground is in the sheer amount of niche genres catered for. With Webradio Deluxe you can locate ballad focused stations, big band, flamenco, latino, groove, tropical, religious, oldies... and so the list goes on. There are separately sorted categories for 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s stations, as well as geographical listings.

Webradio Deluxe also refreshes its list of stations with one click of a button, so you're always up to date. However, this doesn't mean that every stream works; there are still quite a number of stations which produce an error when you try to listen to them. As the error message points out, this could be because the station only airs at specific times, but it does happen a little too often for comfort.

Aside from the radio stations themselves, Webradio Deluxe contains a number of related functions and extras. With a single click you can record a stream to the hard drive, and even if you tune in to a song mid-way through, you won't have missed the beginning on your recording, as the program has a built-in pre-record memory. Very handy.

There's also a "timeshift" mode, which continuously records a station so you can pause or flick backwards and forwards through it. Finally, the recording system has a timer so you can set it to record anything you're going to miss; this can handle multiple simultaneous recordings, should that be necessary.

Webradio Deluxe gives the user the facilities to organise their own playlists and burn CDs directly within the program. A track editor is included, so extraneous material can be trimmed off the start or end of a song, plus there's a built-in CD cover design program. Sadly, though, the track editor is overly fiddly to use.

The package is rounded off with a graphic equaliser and audio effects menu, plus a visualisations window (funky little graphics that beat in time to the music).

There are plenty of stations on offer here, all neatly compartmentalised into genres, but the downside is that even with the up to date listings, some streams appear to be redundant. Webradio Deluxe's recording facilities are excellent, including a pre-record function and the ability to set timers and record multiple broadcasts. The program's extras are handy, too, with integrated CD burning and cover design.