Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

There is also an app called &quot;radiodroid&quot; (or maybe it is &quot;radiodroid2&quot;; on the <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;f-droid.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;f-droid.org</a> app store that says it builds all the apps from free&#x2F;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 <i>everything</i> 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&#x27;s big band, tejano, on and on.<p>Edit: I also recall a nice little linux program called radiotray, on debian (that sat in the XFCE or maybe LXDE app tray &#x2F; bar), that did something similar. Presumably there are others.<p>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&#x2F;relaxation page: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lukecall.net&#x2F;e-9223372036854618463.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lukecall.net&#x2F;e-9223372036854618463.html</a><p>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&#x27;t get anything to happen after I logged in, etc., and finally gave up. Mentioning in case others know better.

If you like this to explore music of other places, try also <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;radiooooo.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;radiooooo.com&#x2F;</a> to travel through time and space.<p>Mentioned here a few times (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;query=radiooooo&amp;sort=byPopularity&amp;type=story" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;que...</a>)

I used this service a couple of years ago to listen to the local radio station from my home city.<p>It&#x27;s indescribable how homesick it made me, but at the same time I felt so much more connected to my home after hearing the local news, and my regional accent which is somewhat rare.<p>for context; I&#x27;m British, from a city called Coventry (which does not have an accent similar its neighbours) and I live in Sweden, where everyone who speaks English sounds either American or very Swedish.

In case the developer is reading, feature requests:<p>(1) When browsing the list of radio stations, I can see the use of alphabetical by call letters. But the way my brain remembers radio stations is by band (AM&#x2F;FM) and frequency. (Maybe it is ancient muscle memory from radios you tune with a knob.) So it would be nice to have this available as a view.<p>(2) In a large metro area, there are transmitters in different cities and suburbs. To get the full set of stations, I have to flip around between nearby points on a map and look at different lists. (For example, in the Bay Area, you have to click SF to get KQED then click Berkeley to get KPFA.) It would be super cool if I could click on any point on the map, then see one list of all stations that a radio at that location would pick up. Getting a completely accurate list is probably complicated (topography, weather, antenna type, etc.) but distance and maybe transmitter power would give a good approximation.

So how are all these radio stations connected to the Internet? Do all these radio stations have a server? Or is there some organization which does the broadcasting on behalf? Who pays for the streaming fees? Can I start my own station?

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&#x27;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.

If curious see also:<p>2018 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18427701" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18427701</a><p>2016 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13164058" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13164058</a><p>Comments from the developer in both threads.

Similar database of internet radio stations: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.radio-browser.info" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.radio-browser.info</a>

It&#x27;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.<p>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&#x27;s instrument.

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.

Is there an open directory of radio stream URIs?<p>Like if I wanted to build my own tiny radio streaming client, where would I look for the streams?<p>I tried snooping the network tab in dev tools on Radio Garden, but couldn&#x27;t see many requests that weren&#x27;t either grabbing map tiles, or connecting to Radio Garden itself.

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.

This was the subject of a really nice NYTimes &quot;Letter of Recommendation&quot; recently <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;11&#x2F;05&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;letter-of-recommendation-radio-garden.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;11&#x2F;05&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;letter-of-recomm...</a>

Recently, a user posted on my problem validation platform that she&#x27;s unable to listen to radio from her home town (possibly rural India) from a foreign country[1].<p>Setting up SDR for this seems to be beyond the capacity of that user. Sites like these might address this need gap, if they allow the user to tune to specific frequency rather than being limited to particular stations[I understand that this has larger technical overhead].<p>P.S I checked the Radio Garden, it GeoIP&#x27;s some stations, there were no prominent stations, mostly comprised of religious stations and couple of unknown hobby stations.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;needgap.com&#x2F;problems&#x2F;126-listening-to-obscure-international-radio-station-radio-audio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;needgap.com&#x2F;problems&#x2F;126-listening-to-obscure-intern...</a>

Nice for discoverability. I&#x27;ve been positively surprised by [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hirschmilch.de&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hirschmilch.de&#x2F;</a> <i>progressive</i> stream, which i&#x27;m now listening to by other means.<p>(Should i feel Jägermeistered now?)

Great work! If op is maintainer, feature request: &quot;random station in random city&quot;

wow how does this work? is there a public list of radio stations? or does this site maintain a scraper of sorts?

That is really neat. I&#x27;d love to see an app like this which allows surfing the globe for listening to shortwave radio. Users could report which WebSDRs (for example) are picking up which stations. Then those stations are marked as live on the globe, and you can listen to the WebSDR audio feed(s) that are picking up that station, as if you&#x27;re listening on a real shortwave radio.<p>Maybe individual WebSDR listings could show SINPO numbers, to allow users to choose a source based on the quality level that&#x27;s currently available...hmmm!

You put radio... on the internet.

Thanks for sharing this, heard my hometowns&#x27; radio station in Bolivia after 5 years of being away, nostalgia hit me hard. :)

For anyone who&#x27;s curious - this is built with CesiumJS (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cesium.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cesium.com&#x2F;</a>), same as: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21037167" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21037167</a><p>Disclaimer: I work for Cesium.

If you’d like something a bit more curated, WFMU has a show called “The Blind Tourist” which is mostly audio collage from various global radio stations.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wfmu.org&#x2F;playlists&#x2F;TX" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wfmu.org&#x2F;playlists&#x2F;TX</a> All shows are archived and streamable for free.

This is great. For years I have been exploring radios around. Sometimes I add radios from my region to Radio Garden. Just send it through their form and wait to be accepted. I just wish it was easier to export their favorites. I once lost a good list of saved radios.

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 &quot;lock&quot; the current station while still being able to wander around looking for another station to try

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 &quot;sleep time&quot; stream.<p>Any app recommendations?

Nice.<p>But, oh my god, why are mainstream radios stuck with the same 10 songs since what seems like forever ? First pickup: suzanne vega, second pickup: francoise hardy.

Awesome. Feature request: show tooltip showing station name&#x2F;location on hover so that I don&#x27;t need to change location to get station info.

I&#x27;m impressed... a bit crazy while you are zoomed out, but when you zoom in it&#x27;s actually a good way to navigate through a country.

Overall I like it, great interface. I would like to be able to explore the map without changing the station I&#x27;m actively listening to.

This is wonderful! I forgot how beautiful Cambodian pop was. Be really nice if they had country borders and city labels as an option too.

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.

Just wondering what would happen if you combined these thousands of radio stations to 1 stream. Would it result to white noise?

I have used it for a while now, thanks for the work put in it! I would love to have some sleep timer added to it.

Any good recommendations on which cities ahve great radio ? I mostly stick to London and surroudning area.

This feels like the opening to a movie that needs an intro to the variability of human societies. Love it!

Why do so many US stations have such cryptic abbreviated names? And why do so many start with W or K?

Congrats! You successfully found me a replacement for TuneIn :)<p>Navigating on a map is so much more practical

One of the few applications pinned to my browser in the past year.<p>It&#x27;s a fantastic work companion.

When would you guys listen to radio ? And why not Spotify, podcast, YouTube etc ?

I want to travel in time in listen to radio&#x2F;TV in a specific point in time.

It&#x27;s interesting how few streaming stations there are in eastern Asia.

Very cool. Never seen anything like this, though they may exist. Well done

Thank you very much for this great interface to online terrestrial radio!

I have nothing to add to the discussion but this so cool :D

Spot on. A HN show that might actually use every day!

Someone needs to make this for DTV...

dang! i forgot about this. thank you. it&#x27;s like scanning the radio on grand theft auto

This is so cool. Love it.

Very nice onterface, tnx!

part of me wishes this site was called &quot;sound.garden&quot;

This has been around for years, what makes it front-page-of-HN-worthy now?

Thank you. Just found this beauty on Faroe Islands <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;radio.garden&#x2F;listen&#x2F;-7fm&#x2F;EgrMqzvq" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;radio.garden&#x2F;listen&#x2F;-7fm&#x2F;EgrMqzvq</a>

I suppose this is strictly for terrestrial radio stations? I run an internet radio station[1] and there is a galaxy of us.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hymns.fm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hymns.fm</a>