Ever wish you could find a radio station that plays just the music you want to hear? Maybe you like classic rock music, but also enjoy a little jazz, or country, or pop music every once in a while. Maybe you have certain songs you NEVER want to hear. Wouldn't it be nice to click a button that says "I never want to hear this song again!"

LAUNCHcast.com is an internet radio station from Yahoo! that allows you to do just this. When you play the radio station, you can select from a preset channel, like "Today's Big Hits," "Awesome 80s," "Easy Jazz" or "Classic Rock," or you can make your own station.

LAUNCHcast has two version, the free version that plays commercials every four or five songs, and a paid version ($35.99 per year or $3.99 per month) that is commercial free and offers a few more benefits. To sign up go to www.launchcast.com and click on the Create My Station button. This will bring you to a page that asks you to sign in. You need to have a Yahoo! account to use this service. If you don't have a Yahoo! account, click on Sign Up Now.

Fill out the information on the sign-up page and click Submit This Form. You now have a Yahoo! ID that you can use to log into LAUNCHcast in the future. Click on Continue to Yahoo!, check LAUNCHcast and click Continue. You are brought to a page that lets you start defining your radio station. Don't worry if you don't find many artists you like on this page, it is just the beginning. Click on Create My Station and your LAUNCHcast experience will begin.

When you listen to LAUNCHcast a small browser window is opened. When you want to stop listening, just close this window. You can close all other internet windows while you are listening if you want. The small LAUNCHcast window, gives you information on the song being played, but it also gives you several options you don't find with other radio stations.

First, under the song title, LAUNCHcast gives you four control options. You can pause the song and restart it when you want, you can skip the song, you can tell LAUNCHcast NEVER to play this song on your station again and your can adjust the volume.

To the right of the song information under the heading "Rate It" are three tabs labeled song, artist, and album. This is where you rate the song that is playing. The higher you rate it, the more often you will hear it. Click on each tab to rate the song, artist and album.

There are also lots of clickable links in this small window that will take you to your main browser window and give you information. You can look up the artist, song, or album, find lyrics, buy the CD, or view a list of songs that were recently played on your station.

From the main LAUNCHcast window, you can search for artists or albums and rate them so you can further tailor the songs you hear. You can look at the songs you've rated and change them around as well. There are all kinds of different things to explore like music videos, photos, artist discographies and biographies.

LAUNCHcast works best if you have a broadband connection to the internet, but you can click on options and set the player to modem connection. Listening to music while you are working on your computer can be relaxing and help to pass the time. LAUNCHcast gives you a choice of the music you listen to - as they say, it's "music that listens to you." Give it a try sometime!