roadster: Can you provide a specific stream or two you're seeing this with? We'd love to get you listening to any and all stations you like, but when Live365 or anyone adds something (like password-protection) onto a stream, it's additional work for us to support it, provided they'll allow it at all.

Anonymous: Indeed, background running is something Apple needs to provide other audio apps, not just iPod. I'm not holding my breath, however.

RealAudio is pretty rare to find, especially on its own. WMA is far more common, which is unfortunate. A whole lot of public radio streams around the US just added MP3 streams for iPhone compatibility, and we may see more of this over time.

As for EDGE, I've tested the application extensively with my first generation iPhone, and it's worked quite well. It's worth noting that full bars are an indication of signal on the voice network, not the data network. As well, EDGE can vary in speed greatly, depending on location. EDGE is certainly capable of handling 64 kbps or lower streams, if not higher, and many, many stations offer streams at those levels.