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If you like this to explore music of other places, try also https://radiooooo.com/ to travel through time and space.

Mentioned here a few times (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

I would like to contribute some songs. Do I have to upload them? What about copyright and stuff?
There is an option on the top right with icon of a black "record player" for uploading a song from an audio file. You might have to make an free account with an email.
This one: http://www.lightyear.fm/ is a neat visualization of the "radio bubble" around Earth about 110 light years in diameter (edit: radius).
>110 light years in diameter.

radius.

Haven't seen that before. Now I can recreate the opening to Contact at home!
I just got rick-rolled at 30LY.
Thank you so much for this. It makes me so happy that I can be in different country and yet listen to my favorite station back home.
wow how does this work? is there a public list of radio stations? or does this site maintain a scraper of sorts?
Something I vaguely remember reading in an app (maybe it was the "internet radio" app or its description, from https://f-droid.org?) said there is a maintained list on the internet, of stations, like maybe in xml. (edit: or maybe where I read that was about the "radiotray" linux desktop app.)

edit: Ah, another comment has mentioned "Similar database of internet radio stations: https://www.radio-browser.info ".

One of the few applications pinned to my browser in the past year.

It's a fantastic work companion.

Same here. Although I wish it would show the song names.
The radiodroid app does (which I mentioned in another comment here), at least, and probably others -- it seems to depend on the station.
I'm impressed... a bit crazy while you are zoomed out, but when you zoom in it's actually a good way to navigate through a country.
part of me wishes this site was called "sound.garden"
When I first saw the band's name in the early 90s, my imagination ran wild with what they might be like. Considering the musical landscape at the time (a few I was aware of-- Enya, Fishbone, Skinny Puppy, Ice Cube, Slayer) it could have been anything and everything.

They are still one of my favorite bands, and Badmotorfinger is probably in my top 3 albums of all time... but I must admit I was disappointed when I first heard them because my expectations had been so crazy from the name. It took going through some tough times before I warmed up to their style, and the name never seemed to have much to do with it. It's a great name, though.

It's named after a permanent outdoor sculpture installation in Seattle.
I came across this a while back and had hours of fun randomly sampling radio stations around the world. The one feature I wish it had was the ability to "lock" the current station while still being able to wander around looking for another station to try
There's a "Lock" button right above the zoom in/out buttons that does this.
Thanks! That's new, I haven't used Radio Garden in months and the previous version didn't have that.
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Great site! But as I clicked on music radio stations across the US, they were almost all broadcasting commercials at the time. Which is one of the fundamental problems with the format.
Filter for public radio? In my opinion anything else isn’t worth listening anyways.
For non-commercial stations in the US, I can vouch for WBAI and WUSB in New York.
My vote, every time, has to be for WFMU. "The format", in 'FMUs case, is whatever the DJ likes to play.

You may end up listening to an hour of funk, followed by an hour of experimental noise, then old '78s and bluegrass. It makes for a fun listen.

https://wfmu.org/ - for a feel of programming, you can pick some of the DJs from here: http://www.wfmu.org/table

Yes! Freem-form WFMU is an incredible station. Though based in NJ, it has a worldwide listener base. It is entirely listener supported, without even corporate underwriting, unlike other public radio stations in the US. It also has internet accesible archives of programming that goes back into the 90's. If you have a unique musical itch, just Google that song and add WFMU as the site. Click and enjoy the playlist that pops up.
Another truly eclectic station is Radio Paradise. It's like a constant wandering journey with a great community.
Probably because they were all owned by iHeartMedia. Outside of a few AM stations, and a college station, they own everything in my area.

I would listen to broadcast radio if DJ's were hired for their muscial knowledge, and ability to put a playlist together. But I don't think they even use local people on these stations anymore. It's just the same tired old songs with a commercial break every 6 minutes.

There is also an app called "radiodroid" (or maybe it is "radiodroid2"; on the https://f-droid.org app store that says it builds all the apps from free/open source) which I have very much enjoyed for this. Unlike the other 1-2 internet radio apps I tried, this one made it easy to browse thousands of stations, search by tag (I guess everything is in there), language, country, etc etc, set bookmarks, list listening history, and no annoying weirdness. Very few that I have tried had commercials, those that did were not enough to annoy: bach, beatles, ethnic, deep lounge, 1940's big band, tejano, on and on.

Edit: I also recall a nice little linux program called radiotray, on debian (that sat in the XFCE or maybe LXDE app tray / bar), that did something similar. Presumably there are others.

Edit2: I mention radiodroid and internet radio among ideas like watching news TV sites on the internet from around the world, on my simple fun/relaxation page: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854618463.html

Edit3: I tried libre.fm too (which basically seems to be an FSF initiative to flag or play favorite tracks from archive.org by category, and had high hopes, thought it had promising ideas, but though it seemed to work well at first, I later couldn't get anything to happen after I logged in, etc., and finally gave up. Mentioning in case others know better.

Radiodroid 2 is also available in the Play store.

Thank you for that. Finally time to say goodbye to TuneIn.

Heh, and I was about to mention TuneIn radio. I have been using it from 2013 to 2016. Then I switched to Spotify (premium) because I got tired of the ads in the radio stations.
+1 for radio droid on android, has an alarm clock AND a sleep timer, which seems to be rare on hardware digital radios... (Even BBC sounds doesn't have an alarm clock).

If you also want to find different stations around the world there is also http://www.surfmusic.de/ which I often use for power 105.1FM in nyc, which is difficult to find a stream of here in the UK.

One correction to my earlier comment, where I said there were few commercials or not enough to annoy: sometimes there are, but with so many other stations one can usually just switch to something similar, it seems. I made a list of "favorites" and there were plenty to choose from, even tabernacle choir music, Russian spiritual music, etc.
RadioDroid is awesome, but the one feature I wish it has was Android Auto integration. The main place I listen to radio is in the car, and I end up falling back to TuneIn because I can change stations easily while driving.
I used to be user of TuneIn radio for a year or two but grew to dislike it with its newer heavier updates that you could not avoid and the pressure to go professional or whatever it's called. Now I just have bookmarks to the BBC Sounds webpage and also to the couple of other stations I listen to sometimes. It cuts out the middle man and the risk of initially great sites like this going the way of TuneIn radio and ruining the user experience.
Why do so many US stations have such cryptic abbreviated names? And why do so many start with W or K?
It was a naming convention created in the early 1900s, using the Mississippi River as a rough line of delineation. Local TV stations use a similar convention.

https://www.rd.com/culture/radio-stations-k-w/

Oh wow so they don't even stand for anything? Must be hard to brand an abbreviation you get handed!
You can request a call sign along with getting your license from the FCC. The process has changed over time, but many (most?) call signs have some sort of historical connection to something: e.g. KRON was broadcast from the SF Chronicle newspaper building, WRCT is Carnegie Mellon's University's station (originally Radio Carnegie Tech, from before it was CMU). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_signs_in_the_United_State...
It seems to go in both directions: you can ask for one that has some meaning to you (which you can then potentially get if no one is using it), or you can try to make up a backronym. I don't remember good backronym examples but I know they exist. The stations will also vary in whether they prefer for people to pronounce the whole callsign, or just part of it, or spell it out. (Technically I think the callsign is always spelled out when used as a callsign, but not necessarily when used as a brand.)
This has been around for years, what makes it front-page-of-HN-worthy now?
save that for the more frequently reposts :)
It offers some variety when so many of us are working from home?

Also, just because it isn't new doesn't mean it isn't interesting.

It's crazy how similar pop music sounds from all over the world. The language differs, but the energy of the music is similar in a lot of different countries.

I wonder if this is because everyone is using digital audio workstations like Ableton or Logic now. It used to be that different places had different instruments; and it would take years to become an expert. But now, the DAW is everybody's instrument.

musicians are the ultimate cross-pollinators .. someone, somewhere will inevitably get a creative buzz from listening to something solid from somwhere else.. its not a bad thing, entirely.. different strokes for different folks .. Think about "guitars", except over the centuries.. is it a technical copying that makes the music sound the same, since it is a stringed instrument, like those other ones ? hmm It certainly could be argued that pace of interaction can lead to loss of diversity.. isolated people dont copy music styles.. big topic !
Strange, I tuned into a random South Africa station and the guy immediately started talking about radio garden. Coincidence? Did not sound like an advert because he immediately trailed off to talking about Netflix and some ex marine sniper stuff.
Perhaps he'd been browsing hacker news.
All I want is an app that I can hotkey to my main (android) screen that starts a stream with an auto-sleep timer set to some value. I currently have to click like 6 times with various wait times to listen to my nightly "sleep time" stream.

Any app recommendations?

I mention radiodroid elsewhere here: it has a sleep timer that defaults to the last one set, so you would have to tap first to start the app, then 2nd to start a station (at the top of your favorites), then the timer and ok, so that is 4 taps I guess.

Edit: and it seems, an alarm clock.

Without a timer, if your stream can be found in a url form just save a link on your homescreen. One click can start it.

For a one button solution with timer if no app is satisfactory you can build your script in Workflow (IOS) or any other automation tool on android. You might find a script already made on your liking.

It's interesting how few streaming stations there are in eastern Asia.
I could be wrong, but I figured South Korea might not do regular radio that much. It has dense population and a big network of mobile data for streaming.
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When would you guys listen to radio ? And why not Spotify, podcast, YouTube etc ?
Haha I use YouTube as my music player or soundcloud/bandcamp

Podcasts are hard to listen to while writing code imo/same with new music I usually loop stuff I already know.

I listen to international radio, mostly for countries where I have previously lived (a handful). I also listen to some online radio stations, particularly Radio Paradise and soma.fm .. I've donated to both in the past.

I have Spotify, and I have about 1500 artists that I follow, but even their algos keep feeding me the same stuff all the time. And there's no "flow" between songs in "Built for you" playlists (Youtube Music, as well).

And sometimes, for certain kinds of moods, I want to listen to music where I don't understand the lyrics. International radio is great for that, even when the DJs/announcers break in and talk.

That said, I never ever listen to real radio anymore, and I'd only really do that in my car. I move around the US West a lot, and updating my radio presets for the 3-4 locations I'm in frequently is harder to manage than online radio platform presets.

I think that there is something to be said about professionally curated music. Most terrestrial radio is irrelevant (in the US at least, thanks to ClearChannel) but I've been listening to SomaFM for awhile now and genre for genre I like it better than what any algorithm has put together.
One word: Discovery.

College radio is excellent for this. My favorite DJ has been on 4 hours a week for a decade, and most of the music is new to me. Half is OK in the background, there can be a handful of awful grindy noise bleh, but another bunch of it is often great, and there are amazing gems that have taken my listening off into new frontiers — from Bevis Frond to Gravitar to Mono to Expo 70.

The most common question the kids ask is: How can you listen to that? The answer is: I’m happy to listen to unfamiliar and even unpleasant music if that’s the price to discover something completely unexpected and amazing.

I'd happily listen to a Spotify playlist if i could reliably discover playlists in specific genres that have a good mix of stuff and are regularly updated. Spotify doesn't seem to have an interface for that.

Not that radio is always well-curated either!

I especially like radio for video games. Certain games really lend themselves to it. Like Euro Truck Simulator. Driving a lorry around Sweden, making deliveries while listening to local radio, makes for quite an immersive experience.
Thanks for sharing this, heard my hometowns' radio station in Bolivia after 5 years of being away, nostalgia hit me hard. :)
Great work! If op is maintainer, feature request: "random station in random city"
I suppose this is strictly for terrestrial radio stations? I run an internet radio station[1] and there is a galaxy of us.

[1] https://hymns.fm