One of the biggest benefits of listening to music online, versus listening to any of your local radio stations, is the choice of stations available. They cater to any and all genres of music you could think of, from country music all the way to 70s music. There are literally hundreds of radio stations, setup by hobbyists to serious radio personalities. They exist on ad revenue and donations and could go on for years on very small budgets.
And these stations cover not only music, but even run their own talk radio shows. There are a wide variety of stations exclusively for talk radio and provide shows covering almost any topic you could be interested in. Talk radio is widespread online for another reason, which is cost. Unlike running a music station, no royalties have to be paid out for the show, enabling anyone to run their own show.
The icing on the cake is that if you do have a local or national radio station that you do like, chances are that they will have their own stream that you can listen to. If you have a local country music station that you like, do a search and it is quite possible that you might find an online broadcast.
All you will need is a decent internet connection, ideally broadband for the best quality, though even at lower bandwidth levels; the quality is still very listenable. Most online radio stations are browser based, so you don’t even need to install any specific software. Just load and play.