You hate commercial radio, right?

Of course you loathe the same focus-tested, 300 songs over and over. If that many. "More Than A Feeling" by Boston - what, for the 5,567th time?

And what if you are in, or manage, a local band? Good luck getting played on commercial radio. That station you'd love to play your music has a focus-tested playlist configured down to the last song. And the disk jockeys that sound like they are in your community could be hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

By now, you may be well aware of the Internet's ability to let your music get heard. You may not have heard of Mercora, a user-contributed digital radio network with more than 20,000 fully searchable channels available daily. Sound quality is great, and access costs either $4.99 per month, or $3.99 a month for an annual sub.

Just today, Mercora became available for Windows Mobile-based handhelds. Mercora IM Radio Mobile v1.0 is more like a portable radio with 20,000 channels than a mobile iPod. That's because most of its source material is streaming music tracks in real time, rather than downloads transferred from a Mac or PC to an iPod.

I'm not saying Mercora is better than iPod. It's just different, and may open you up to music possibilities you've never even knew existed. You can also IM fellow Mercora members about the tracks you are listening to, or to suggest that they tune in to a specific channel.

I hope this doesn't sound like an ad, but if you were to see an ad for Mercora, you would see that the new Mercora IM Radio Mobile v1.0 costs nothing extra if you are already a Mercora subscriber.