Internet Radio And Me, Part 2

A while back, I was working via a client's VPN which cut off access to some portions of my own home network (lame, I know).  One side effect of this horrible state of affairs was that I could not listen to my own music library during the day.  I wrote about some of the options I tried back then, and eventually I found a way around it and that was the end of it....until now.  I just started a gig with a new client which has me working in their fancy offices in midtown Manhattan.  Said client is a bit...touchy about security, and so they are employing all manner of port, proxy, and app-blocking against my efforts to stream my music from home.  I've found a way around most of their defenses (again, not to do anything nefarious, just to listen to my music, which I suppose could be nefarious, depending on the song), but the only method available to me suffers from a pretty long lag, and an overall lack of easy control of what's playing.  I basically just have to set up a playlist then sit through it - skipping around is a slow and frustrating affair.

So once again, I find myself at the mercy of internet radio.  I checked in again on the big 3 - Pandora, Slacker, and Last.FM and wasn't much happier than I was last time.  Pandora now has ads (I don't have a premium account), ditto Slacker (that is, when the stream is working), and Last.FM is convinced that I am really into emo.

So where does that leave me?  WOXY is out of business, Lala just shut its doors and gave everyone an iTunes credit, and there's only so much daytime NPR programming I can handle.  I know there's a million internet radio stations out there, but which ones are any good?  Santa Monica's KCRW and Seattle's KEXP are both great options, if you don't mind the occasional pledge pitch.  And I've been enjoying hearing a ton of new music on the hyperlocal (for me) East Village Radio.  But so far this month, the big winner in the "help me find something great to listen to" sweepstakes is NPR Music.  Thanks to their "First Listen" series, in the past 2 weeks I've been able to stream (for free) new full-length releases from The National, Flying Lotus, The Black Keys, Sleigh Bells, Dead Weather, and LCD Soundsystem, to name just a few.  And thanks to their "Live In Concert" series, I got to catch up on recent shows from Freelance Whales, Shout Out Louds, Hot Chip, The xx, and Caribou, among others.  In a word, rock.

What do you listen to when you can't listen to your own music library?  Online radio stations?  Recommendation engines?  The sound of silence?  Tell me in the comments.