I'll be the first to admit that online radio at first seemed like a pretty strange idea, at least to me. Many local radio stations provide Internet audio links to their content right on their individual sites. The ever-popular search engine can help find them. But if you can't get your favorite programming or music here in Abilene, then you can go to it via computer, instead of having to move to a different market. To listen, you'll need either the RealPlayer software or Microsoft Netshow, both easy to find on the Web.
Individual stations broadcast in one format or the other, so it pays to have both.
You'll also need a fairly fast modem. A 28.8 is the real minimum to get anything resembling true radio quality. Faster is better. Don't always expect the sound to be perfect - talk radio is still better suited to current Internet connections than Top 40. That's when your modem gets a bit overloaded and can't get data to stream through it fast enough to play audio in real-time.