If you are a music lover and are looking to improve your Italian language skills, you should absolutely be streaming Radio Italia. The two main ways to stream are to stream from their website or from their app. Either way, you won’t be sorry. So why Radio Italia?
They only play Italian music
If you have already had the idea to stream an Italian radio station and do a simple search for “Italian radio stations, ” you’ll find a bunch of them and you might not know where to begin. Most popular radio stations in Italy like RDS (Radio Dimensione Suono) and Radio Deejay play a mix of Italian and American (or European) music. I would say that they play A LOT of music in English since that is what Italians mostly want to hear. This is why Radio Italia is the best choice. They only play Italian music. The music is mostly contemporary but they will also play some music as far back as the 1950s.
Take advantage of the commercials and the deejays talking
You might be thinking “Why in the world would I want to listen to commercials?!” If you are learning Italian, listening to commercials or the deejays talking to each other or interacting with their audience, you have the opportunity to hear how the language sounds when native speakers are using it. You can pick up new expressions and high-frequency words and hear correct pronunciation. It’s a great way to test your comprehension skills. So don’t change the station when there are commercials!
Italian music is not just Volare
Don’t get me wrong, I love the song Volare. It’s a classic, it’s fun to sing along and Domenico Modugno didn’t have the international success that he did because his song was just ok. However, Italian contemporary music has come a long way. While most of what is played on Radio Italia could be considered pop music, they also play Italian rap. Radio Italia does offer three different choices of stations you can listen to. The main station is RadioItalia which is their on air radio. The other two choices are RadioItalia Trend which plays what is trendy right now and RadioItalia Sanremo which plays songs that were presented at Sanremo (Il Festival della Canzone Italiana), which takes place each February and has been around since 1951! So on this channel, you’ll hear a variety of songs but most are of what Italians would consider “typical Sanremo songs.” They were generally very pop based, sang of love and heartbreak but the last few editions have seen some rap songs. If you’d like some more information on the Sanremo Italian Song Festival, click here.
You’ll know who to add to your music platform
Whether you download music to your iTunes or you use streaming services like Pandora, Spotify or Apple Music, listening to Radio Italia will give you an idea of which artists you’d like to hear more of or which songs you’d want to listen to over and over again. If you are listening on your laptop through the website, Radio Italia will usually have the artist and song title listed as it’s playing but they also list the last five songs played. Or if your’re listening through the app, it will list the current song and artist at the bottom. You could always make good use of your Shazam app, too. Just Shazam the song and it will be saved in your Shazam app and you can go back to it when you have time. If you’ve downloaded songs or stream them through another platform, now you can even look for the lyrics online and sing along and even learn the meaning of a song.
Music helped me learn Italian
Back when I was learning Italian in college, I felt like my courses weren’t enough to get me to a level of Italian that I wanted. My professors for the most part were good but the focus was more grammar than anything and it was only a few hours throughout the week. I needed more input. Then it came to me! I love music, why don’t I listen to Italian music? In those days, we did not have the advantage of streaming music, iTunes and the internet was not being used like it is today. I headed to Tower Records, which is no longer around but it was a huge music store that would definitely have a good World Music section. When I got to the Italian section, I had only known some Italian music from the 1950s like Volare and Al di là so my requirement for choosing a CD was the music had to be recent. I started flipping through CDs and came across Laura Pausini. Her album, Laura was recent and she didn’t look so bad, either! It was one of the best choices I had ever made. I was an instant fan. I went back and bought her previous album as well. I was listening as much as I could and I was soon singing along. Naturally, I wanted to know what she was singing about and so I started using my Italian-English dictionary to help me along. My vocabulary started growing exponentially. And so did my Italian CD collection. Soon after, I started buying other CDs from other contemporary Italian singers. I haven’t stopped, although now I download music like everyone else.
Artists I recommend
The beauty of streaming Radio Italia is that there will be a good mix of Italian music so you can find the artists that you like easily. However, there are some artists that I recommend because their voices are clearer than others and might be easier to understand when you are just starting to learn the language. Here are some of my picks (in no particular order):
- Laura Pausini
- Giorgia
- Marco Mengoni
- Alessandra Amoroso
- Cesare Cremonini
- Elisa
- Nek
