All 167 stations as a list
The same stations as above, as plain text — ordered by shelf, with location, operator and audio quality. Readable without JavaScript.
Stations that refuse to have a genre.
- NTS 1 — NTS Radio, London (GB) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · live DJ, community, human hostSince 2011, NTS has broadcast round the clock from a storefront in Dalston, London, with shows from over 600 hosts. No other station moves this casually between Congolese soukous, free jazz, and grime — often within the same hour.
- NTS 2 — NTS Radio, London (GB) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · live DJ, communityNTS's second channel runs quieter than the first, making room for long shows that don't fit anywhere else's grid. If NTS 1 feels too erratic, this is where you'll settle in.
- NTS Slow Focus — NTS Radio, London (GB) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · instrumental, at night, no adsOne of NTS's curated endless mixes, assembled from their own archive: ambient, modern classical, and field recordings, no talk. Made for working to, without turning into elevator music.
- dublab — dublab, Los Angeles (US) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · community, live DJ, no adsSince 1999, this non-profit collective in Los Angeles has broadcast whatever it likes — ambient, krautrock, field recordings, often within the same hour. If you want to know what radio without a music desk sounds like, start here.
- dublab Barcelona — dublab, Barcelona (ES) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · community, live DJThe Spanish offshoot of dublab, run by its own collective in Barcelona. More Mediterranean and more danceable than the mothership in Los Angeles, with plenty of Iberian electronic music you won't hear anywhere else.
- dublab Deutschland — dublab, Köln (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · community, live DJ, human hostThe German dublab branch is based in Cologne and broadcasts in German and English, with a strong pull toward jazz and experimental electronic music. The only one of the three dublabs with regular German-language talk.
- Cashmere Radio — Cashmere Radio e.V., Berlin (DE) · vorbis · 192 kbit/s · community, live DJ, no adsA member-run radio out of a storefront in Berlin-Lichtenberg, carried by volunteers and free of advertising. Shows range from Eastern European folk-music research to noise — held together only by the curiosity of the people on the mic.
- Kiosk Radio — Kiosk Radio, Brüssel (BE) · aac · 192 kbit/s · live DJ, communityA converted newsstand in Brussels' Warandepark, broadcasting live since 2017 — DJs literally stand in a booth in the city park. The Belgian scene is more idiosyncratic than the British one, and here's why.
- Refuge Worldwide — Refuge Worldwide, Berlin (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · community, live DJ, no adsA Neukölln station whose proceeds go to non-profit projects — radio as fundraiser, with first-rate programming. Musically somewhere between club and talk show, often on topics commercial radio wouldn't touch.
- Rinse FM — Rinse FM, London (GB) · aac · 128 kbit/s · live DJ, human hostStarted in 1994 as a pirate station in a London tower block and was the birthplace of grime and UK garage, before getting an official license in 2010. The shows still sound like someone broadcasting illegally from a rooftop.
- Rinse France — Rinse FM, Paris (FR) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · live DJThe French offshoot of Rinse, with its own programming out of Paris rather than a relay from London. Considerably more Afro house, coupé-décalé, and French rap than the British original.
- Kool FM — Rinse FM, London (GB) · aac · 128 kbit/s · live DJ, human hostThe oldest jungle pirate station still on air, broadcasting since 1991 and under Rinse's roof since 2022. If you want to know what jungle sounds like played by people who were there, listen here.
- WFMU — WFMU, Jersey City (US) · aac · 256 kbit/s · community, human host, no adsThe longest-running freeform station in the US, listener-funded since 1958 and without any music desk — every host plays whatever they want. Legendary for shows where free jazz is followed by a 1962 advertising record.
- Yammat FM — Yammat FM, Zagreb (HR) · aac · 322 kbit/s · live DJ, communityA Croatian independent station broadcasting at 320 kbit/s AAC, which makes it sound better than most major outlets. Programming cuts across funk, soul, Balkan electronic music, and whatever's currently interesting in Zagreb.
- NEU Radio — NEU Radio, Bologna (IT) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · community, human hostA university radio out of Bologna, run by students and local musicians. Italian community radio sounds different from British — chattier, warmer, and with a fondness for things that can go wrong.
- Radio Nova — Radio Nova, Paris (FR) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · live DJ, human hostThe Paris station that has shaped the term Sono Mondiale since 1981: world music before the word existed. Still the best place to hear African funk and French hip-hop side by side.
- FIP — Radio France, Paris (FR) · aac · 195 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalThe public-broadcast eclectic from Paris, on air since 1971 and famous for programming changes that follow no logic at all — Miles Davis, then Aphex Twin, then a chanson. Almost never hosted, never advertised.
- Radio Paradise Main — Radio Paradise, Paradise, Kalifornien (US) · flac · lossless, no adsA married couple in Northern California has hand-assembled every broadcast hour since 2000, funding it all through donations. Broadcasts lossless in FLAC — the difference from 128 kbit/s is clearly audible on good headphones.
- Radio Paradise World/Etc — Radio Paradise, Paradise, Kalifornien (US) · flac · lossless, no adsThe world-music channel from the same people, also lossless and also hand-curated. Less rock than the main channel, more from Mali, Brazil, and Turkey instead — without the esoteric aftertaste world music often has.
- Worldwide FM — Worldwide FM, London (GB) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · live DJ, human hostFounded by Gilles Peterson, the British DJ who's been thinking jazz and club music together since the eighties. The programming follows his ear: Brazilian material, broken beat, African jazz, plenty of talk in between.
- SomaFM Sonic Universe — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalThe channel where jazz and electronic music collide without either swallowing the other — nu jazz, free jazz, broken beat. Filed under Border-crossers because it fits neither drawer.
- SomaFM Seven Inch Soul — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 160 kbit/s · no adsExclusively soul and R&B off original seven-inch singles from the fifties and sixties, straight off the record. The format restriction is the curation — whatever never came out as a single doesn't play here.
- NTS Poolside — NTS Radio, London (GB) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no adsThe sunniest of the NTS endless mixes: Balearic, boogie, Brazilian material from the seventies, Italian synth-pop. Sounds like late afternoon by the water without tipping into chillout kitsch.
- The Lot Radio — The Lot Radio, New York (US) · aac · 128 kbit/s · live DJ, communityBroadcasts from a converted shipping container on a former parking lot in Brooklyn. Guests on the decks around the clock, no programming in the usual sense — you hear whoever happens to be there.
- PBS FM — PBS 106.7FM, Melbourne (AU) · aac · 195 kbit/s · community, human host, no adsCommunity radio from Melbourne, carried by members and volunteer hosts. Australia has a scene Europe barely hears about — it plays here, alongside soul, dub, and whatever people bring in.
- WRUW — Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland (US) · aac · 128 kbit/s · community, human host, no adsStudent radio from Cleveland with the motto “More Diversity, Less Commercials.” Over a hundred shows from volunteers, from polka to noise — the kind of programming no algorithm would ever put together.
- Radio Meuh — Association Radio Meuh, La Clusaz (FR) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsBroadcasting since 2007 from a ski village in the Savoy Alps, founded by two friends as a non-profit association. Soul, funk, electronica, hip-hop and music from all over the world, with no ad breaks and no chasing after every trend.
- Noods Radio — Noods Radio, Bristol (GB) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · live DJ, community, no adsStarted in 2015 in the living room of a shared house in Bristol, first streamed from one founder's laptop, now broadcasting from a pub in St Pauls. Daily shows from the city's collectors, dancers and misfits — no playlists and no ads.
- Radio Raheem — Radio Raheem, Mailand (IT) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · live DJ, communityFounded in Milan in 2017 by people from music, art and culture, because Italy had no radio that sounded like today. It broadcasts from a greenhouse in the Combo cultural venue — underground, sound research and club music, curated by people.
Mashups, vaporwave, genre accidents on purpose.
- Bootie Mashup — Bootie Mashup, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · live DJThe people behind the Bootie party series, playing mashups in San Francisco and a dozen other cities since 2003. At 320 kbit/s, with a mixing craft that goes well beyond the usual two-track trick.
- Nightwave Plaza — Nightwave Plaza, Moskau (RU) · opus · 64 kbit/s · no ads, at night, instrumentalVaporwave around the clock, with stretched-out eighties ad jingles, department-store music, and video-game sounds. An internet culture that materialized as a radio station — animated shopping mall on the website included.
- SomaFM Vaporwaves — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · aac · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalSomaFM's answer to the vaporwave phenomenon, sorted a bit more accessibly than Nightwave Plaza. For anyone who wants to understand the appeal without fighting straight through the genre's thicket.
- Kohina — Kohina, Helsinki (FI) · vorbis · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumental, communityBroadcasting exclusively music from the demoscene and old home computers since 2003 — Amiga modules, C64 sounds, tracker tunes. A genre that shaped a whole generation of programmers and plays nowhere else.
- Keygen FM — Keygen FM, Moskau (RU) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalPlays the chiptune music from software-piracy keygens — small programs whose authors developed a whole music culture out of sheer ambition. Absurd origin, surprisingly good music.
- 24/7 Vapor Funk — Zelerk, Chicago (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalThe danceable offshoot of vaporwave, called future funk: eighties Japanese city pop records, sped up and laid over house beats. Happier than the source material, and considerably faster.
- 24/7 Chiptune Radio — Zelerk, Chicago (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalModern chiptune productions — new music on old game-console hardware rather than nostalgia reruns. The limit of three channels and noise forces an inventiveness you can hear.
- NoLife Radio — NoLife, Paris (FR) · mp3 · 96 kbit/s · community, no adsThe remnant of a French niche TV channel for video-game and Japanese culture, living on as radio. Video game music, J-pop, and French oddities in a mix that could only have come about this way.
- Shoot em Up Radio — Shmup Radio, Sankt Petersburg (RU) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · instrumental, no adsExclusively music from shoot-'em-up arcade games, mostly Japanese ones from the nineties. An extremely narrow genre with surprisingly dense musicianship — horn sections and basslines for games that last nine minutes.
- Gamesboro Radio — Gamesboro, Wien (AT) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · instrumental, communityVideo game music from four decades, from orchestral scores to 8-bit tracks, run by a Vienna collective. A repertoire that by now fills serious concert halls and still barely shows up on radio.
- SomaFM SF 10-33 — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, at nightAmbient soundscapes with actual San Francisco police radio mixed underneath — calls, codes, street names, all live. Sounds like the soundtrack to a movie being shot outside right now.
- SomaFM Illinois Street Lounge — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalExotica and space-age bachelor-pad music from the fifties and sixties — the records postwar suburbs used to dream of Tahiti. Absurd, kitschy, and musically surprisingly sophisticated.
- SomaFM Tiki Time — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no adsThe even more specialized twin of Illinois Street Lounge: tiki culture, Hawaiian guitars, bird calls between tracks. A genre that comes straight out of American cocktail bars and is entirely made up.
- SomaFM Covers — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsExclusively cover versions — and specifically ones that rebuild the original instead of replaying it: punk as bossa nova, rap as bluegrass. A whole channel that lives off the joy of misunderstanding.
- NTS Labyrinth — NTS Radio, London (GB) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, instrumental, at nightThe most unwieldy NTS mix: musique concrète, noise, electroacoustic experiments, and things you're not sure qualify as music. Expressly meant as an imposition, and a successful one.
- Gutsy Radio — Gutsy Radio, Vereinigte Staaten (US) · aac · 128 kbit/s · live DJ, communityFreeform in the original sense: no format, no playlist, no program grid. What plays is decided by whoever's on the mic — and you notice immediately when they change.
Ambient, drone, outer space. Music to disappear into.
- SomaFM Drone Zone — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · instrumental, at night, no adsThe best-known drone channel from listener-funded SomaFM in San Francisco, on air for over twenty years. Ambient without a beat, without structure, without end — meant as a sound space, not a music program.
- SomaFM Deep Space One — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · aac · 128 kbit/s · instrumental, at night, no adsAmbient and space sounds, deeper and colder than Drone Zone, with occasional radio chatter from spaceflight archives. The channel to leave running when the apartment starts feeling too small.
- SomaFM Groove Salad — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · flac · 1084 kbit/s · instrumental, no ads, losslessThe house's best-known channel, the same steady hand for over twenty years — and lossless as of recently: FLAC around 1000 kbit/s instead of 128 MP3. If you want to know what the difference does, here's the comparison against your own memory.
- ETX.FM — ETX.FM, Portland (US) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · instrumental, no adsA small American station for what it calls Electronic Listening Music — ambient, modern classical, and everything in between. No hosting, no advertising, no genre fence.
- CAMP Radio — CAMP, Paris (FR) · opus · 128 kbit/s · no ads, communityA French collective broadcasts ambient and experimental music in the Opus format, which sounds noticeably better than MP3 at low bitrates. The selection is calm but never arbitrary — something is always happening.
- Substrate Radio — Substrate Radio, Seattle (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · instrumental, at nightDark ambient and industrial drone from Seattle, considerably more inhospitable than the SomaFM channels. Not a relaxation program, but music that makes a room oppressive — if that's what you're after, there's little better.
- Deep In Space — Drug Radio, Sankt Petersburg (RU) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · instrumental, at nightA Russian ambient channel with a leaning toward psychedelic and space-related sounds. The selection follows a different tradition than the American one — more Berlin School, less Californian relaxation.
- 1st Greek New Age Radio — New Age Radio Greece, Athen (GR) · flac · lossless, instrumentalA Greek station broadcasting new age and meditative music lossless in FLAC — a rarity in this genre. Especially on quiet, overtone-rich pieces, it makes an audible difference.
- Ambi Nature Radio — Ambi Nature Radio, Zürich (CH) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · instrumental, at night, no adsA Swiss station mixing ambient with real nature recordings — rain, forest, water, recorded in specific places. Resolved high enough at 320 kbit/s that the quiet details survive.
- Spokoynoe Radio — Spokoynoe Radio, Moskau (RU) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · instrumental, no adsCalm radio, as the name says in Russian: instrumental music with no announcements, no advertising, at 320 kbit/s. A quiet corner of the catalog that gets by without the usual relaxation clichés and whale song.
- Café del Mar CALM — Café del Mar, Ibiza (ES) · aac · 192 kbit/s · instrumentalThe calm channel from the bar in Sant Antoni, whose sunset compilations invented the chillout genre starting in 1994. Unlike the thousand imitators, this station has the original records and the sense behind them.
- Nature Radio Sleep — Nature Radio, Mailand (IT) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · instrumental, at night, no adsVery slow, very quiet soundscapes, expressly meant for falling asleep and without any dramatic arc. The most useful channel in the catalog for late evening.
- SomaFM Mission Control — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumental, at nightAmbient with spaceflight radio traffic mixed in — Apollo, Space Shuttle, mission control. The voices are real, pulled from NASA archives, giving the music a gravity that pure space ambient never reaches.
- SomaFM Doomed — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, instrumental, at nightDark ambient and horror-film sounds, expressly meant to be spooky and originally built for Halloween. The most unsettling channel in the catalog — which is sometimes exactly right.
Japan 13 stations
City pop, J-jazz, local radio, community.
- BOX Japan City Pop — StreamAfrica, Tokio (JP) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no adsCity pop, wall to wall — that Japanese sound of the late seventies and eighties that combined funk, AOR, and jazz fusion, and has been rediscovered worldwide for a few years now. The direct neighborhood of Atarashii Gakko and their forebears.
- Listen.moe J-Pop — Listen.moe, Tokio (JP) · opus · 192 kbit/s · community, no ads, losslessA volunteer-run station for Japanese pop, broadcasting in the Opus format at 256 kbit/s — the best sound quality this genre gets anywhere. The track list is maintained by the listener community, not an editorial desk.
- Listen.moe K-Pop — Listen.moe, Seoul (KR) · opus · 192 kbit/s · community, no adsThe Korean sister channel, technically identical and also community-curated. It's here because the line between J-pop and K-pop has long since become musically porous.
- R/a/dio — R/a/dio, Tokio (JP) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · community, live DJ, human hostA station that grew out of an imageboard community, where volunteers DJ live and listeners request tracks through a queue. Chaotic, often silly, and precisely for that reason closer to what radio used to be.
- FM Setagaya 83.4 — FM Setagaya, Tokio (JP) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · local, human hostThe district station of Setagaya, a residential area in western Tokyo, with neighborhood news and weather in Japanese. Not a music station, but a window into perfectly ordinary Japanese daily life.
- Gotanno FM 89.2 — Gotanno FM, Tokio (JP) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · local, communityA mini-station from Tokyo's Gotanno neighborhood, run by a handful of people from the block. So small that listening feels like overhearing someone in the next room.
- Jazz Sakura — asia DREAM radio, Tokio (JP) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalJapanese jazz, played by Japanese musicians — a scene with its own tradition that's been producing remarkable work since the sixties and gets barely noticed in the West. Calmer and more formal than American jazz.
- Stereo Anime — Stereo Anime, Tokio (JP) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsAnime theme music from five decades, from the seventies to today. A genre far more musically ambitious than its reputation — here you hear big band arrangements next to synth-pop and metal.
- Yumi Co. Radio — Yumi Co., Paris (FR) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · community, no adsA French collective broadcasts Japanese music at 256 kbit/s — city pop, Shibuya-kei, video game music, selected with a European eye. The outside perspective turns up different finds than Japanese stations do.
- Sound Up Station NFRS — NFRS, Niigata (JP) · mp3 · 96 kbit/s · local, communityA regional station from Niigata Prefecture on Japan's west coast, far from Tokyo. Local music, local news — the opposite of the metropolitan perspective that shapes Japanese culture abroad.
- Anime Para Ti — Anime Para Ti, Tokio (JP) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · communityAnime music with Spanish-language hosting — a station for Latin America's huge, largely overlooked anime community. Two cultures in one program, which regularly leads to surprising transitions.
- NTS Otaku — NTS Radio, London (GB) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no adsNTS with a British eye on Japanese music — city pop, video game sounds, Japanese ambient and noise in one endless mix. Sorted differently than Japanese stations, because here it's selected rather than maintained.
- Shonan Beach FM 78.9 — Zushi-Hayama Community Broadcasting, Zushi (JP) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · local, communityThe community radio of the coastal towns of Zushi and Hayama on Sagami Bay. Through the day it is mostly jazz — in the afternoon, after dark and after midnight — with oldies in between. It sounds like a beach promenade, not a big city.
Electronic with an edge.
- Hirschmilch Techno — Hirschmilch, Kassel (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumental, at nightA one-man station from Kassel running ad-free and unhosted since 2003. The techno channel is the hardest of the four and holds the line for hours without lapsing into cheap tricks.
- Hirschmilch Electronic — Hirschmilch, Kassel (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalThe broadest of the Hirschmilch channels: electronica, downtempo, IDM, all instrumental and uninterrupted. The channel where, after an hour, you forget radio is even playing — in the best sense.
- Hirschmilch Hypnotic — Hirschmilch, Kassel (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumental, at nightThe name says it all: repetitive, slowly mutating tracks that take twelve minutes to get anywhere. For work that can't afford distraction, the most useful channel in the whole catalog.
- Hirschmilch Progressive — Hirschmilch, Kassel (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalProgressive house and trance in the long, patient build that was standard before the festival boom. If you only know trance as a wall of anthems, this is the other, more restrained half of the genre.
- Bassdrive — Bassdrive, Chicago (US) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · live DJ, human hostThe worldwide go-to for drum and bass since 1999, run by a network of volunteer DJs across several continents. No station has held the scene outside Britain together like this one.
- Brokenbeats — Brokenbeats, Kiew (UA) · aac · 340 kbit/s · instrumental, no adsA Ukrainian station for atmospheric drum and bass, broadcasting at over 300 kbit/s AAC — technically one of the best streams in the whole catalog. Has kept running for years, even under conditions that would have shut down others long ago.
- Frisky Radio — Frisky Radio, Cincinnati (US) · mp3 · 96 kbit/s · live DJOne of the few underground house stations that has made the leap across two decades, on air since 2003. Built on continuous DJ mixes rather than individual tracks — radio structured like a night at the club.
- UZIC Techno & Minimal — UZIC, Lausanne (CH) · aac · 128 kbit/s · instrumental, no adsA Swiss station playing minimal and techno exclusively, favoring the stripped-down, near-austere strain of it. Little build, little drama — but tracks you'd otherwise only find on twelve-inches.
- FM4 — ORF, Wien (AT) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · human host, live DJThe alternative channel of Austrian public broadcasting, bilingual in German and English, on air since 1995. A public broadcaster that plays drum and bass and experimental music in the evenings instead of chart hits — Germany has nothing comparable.
- UK Bass Radio — UK Bass Radio, Manchester (GB) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · live DJA small British station for bass music in all its forms — dubstep, garage, bassline, jungle. Small enough that the selection still sounds like people, not playlist software.
- Atmospheric DnB Source — Brokenbeats, Bukarest (RO) · aac · 323 kbit/s · instrumental, at nightThe softer twin channel to Brokenbeats: liquid and atmospheric drum and bass in the same high sound quality. The channel for the hours when the hard variant would be too much.
- RES — RES, Moskau (RU) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · instrumental, no adsA Russian underground station for electronic music at 320 kbit/s and without any interruption. The selection is idiosyncratic enough that you regularly hear tracks that show up in no Western catalog.
- Isekoi Chill Zone — Isekoi Radio, Paris (FR) · flac · lossless, instrumentalA French channel for electronic chill music, broadcasting lossless in FLAC — rare in this genre and immediately audible on good headphones. Musically somewhere between downtempo, lo-fi, and Japanese-influenced electronic music.
- DNB FM — DNB FM, Moskau (RU) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · instrumental, live DJA Russian drum and bass station at 320 kbit/s, mapping the Eastern European scene — a world of its own with its own producers. If you know the British strain, this is its considerably rougher relative.
- SomaFM Suburbs of Goa — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalIndian classical and Bollywood finds, woven together with downtempo and dub — a genre mix that exists nowhere else quite like this. Neither world music nor electronic, but a third thing with no name.
- SomaFM cliqhop idm — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalIDM in the Warp Records tradition: chopped-up rhythms, glitches, tracks that refuse to hold a beat. A genre whose heyday is behind it and is kept alive here.
- SomaFM The Trip — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumental, at nightProgressive house and psychedelic trance in the long build that was standard in British clubs in the nineties. Tracks that take ten minutes and use every one of them.
- Dunkerque Street Radio — Dunkerque Street Radio, Dünkirchen (FR) · aac · 128 kbit/s · live DJ, communityFrom a North Sea port town nobody associates with club music — exactly why. Electro, house, and techno from people who live there and have no scene at their backs.
Salsa, cumbia, Latin alternative — from Havana to Buenos Aires.
- Gladys Palmera Colección — Gladys Palmera, Barcelona (ES) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, human hostAlejandra Fierro Eleta has assembled one of the largest private collections of Latin American music in the world and broadcasts from it. Cuban recordings from the forties next to Colombian psychedelic funk — a record store within the record store.
- Gladys Palmera Latin Fresh — Gladys Palmera, Barcelona (ES) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsThe present-day channel of the same collection: current Latin American productions instead of archive material. Shows that the traditions aren't sitting in a museum, but are being carried forward electronically right now.
- Ibero 90.9 — Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexiko-Stadt (MX) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · community, human host, no adsThe university radio of the Ibero in Mexico City, run by students and steadfastly avoiding the charts. The best place for Mexican indie, digital cumbia, and whatever's occupying the local scene right now.
- Colombia Salsa Dura — Tikast, Cali (CO) · aac · 64 kbit/s · no adsSalsa dura is the hard, fast style from the seventies — Fania sound, horn sections, no ballads. Broadcast from Cali, the city that turned salsa into folk art even though it isn't from Colombia.
- Cumbias Inmortales — Retroland Digital, Monterrey (MX) · aac · 99 kbit/s · no adsClassic cumbia from Mexico, the sonidero tradition of street parties in Monterrey and Mexico City. Music that's been coming out of man-high speakers on street corners there for decades — here without the street noise.
- La Salsa Maestra — La Salsa Maestra, Lima (PE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · human hostA Peruvian salsa station with a pronounced pull toward recordings from the seventies and eighties. Peru has its own salsa history, one that usually gets lost next to Cuba and New York.
- Caracas Salsa Brava — Salsa Brava, Caracas (VE) · aac · 131 kbit/s · no adsVenezuelan salsa from Caracas, a city with its own, harder strain of the genre. Broadcasts at 136 kbit/s AAC and without ad breaks, which is the exception among Latin American stations.
- Radio Cumbia 90s — Emite Radio, La Paz (BO) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsBolivian and Andean cumbia from the nineties, with synthesizers and drum machines instead of horns. A branch of the genre all its own, sounding like someone ran folk music through a home studio.
- Panamericana Salsa Power — Panamericana, Lima (PE) · aac · 128 kbit/s · human hostThe salsa channel of a major Peruvian station, with real hosting and callers from Lima. Less curated than the other channels on this shelf, but closer to what's actually playing there.
- Radiónica — RTVC, Bogotá (CO) · aac · 48 kbit/s · no ads, human hostColombia's public station for everything else that doesn't make it onto radio — Colombian rock, cumbia in unexpected arrangements, hip-hop out of Medellín. The bitrate is modest; the selection isn't.
Old times, but the stubborn kind. Italo disco, spacesynth, early rave — what nobody played back then, and even less so now.
- SomaFM Underground 80s — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, 80s, communityEarly UK synth-pop and new wave away from the rotation — Soft Cell, Human League, and plenty that nobody played even back then. SomaFM has funded itself through donations for over twenty years and broadcasts without a single second of advertising as a result.
- Radio ITALOPOWER! — Radio Italopower, unbekannt (IT) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · 80s, instrumentalItalo disco, Hi-NRG, and spacesynth — the niche nobody else in the shop covers. New productions in the same style are mixed in, barely distinguishable from the originals. The website funds itself through ads.
- 90s90s RAVE — REGIOCAST, Kiel (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · 90s, instrumentalThe early nineties, when rave still sounded like a warehouse and not a festival stage. Acid house and hardcore before Eurodance and long before trance. Tracks built for sound systems that could barely handle the bass — and that's exactly where their hardness comes from.
- SomaFM Left Coast 70s — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · no ads, 70sCalifornian rock and yacht rock from the seventies, curated rather than rotated — Steely Dan next to names that never made it into a best-of compilation. At 320 kbit/s, one of the best-sounding channels in the whole shop.
- Radio Cowabunga — Radio Cowabunga, Madrid (ES) · aac · 128 kbit/s · community, no adsNorthern soul, boogaloo, garage, and power pop from a Spanish collective. Music that flopped in the sixties and got rediscovered decades later on British dance floors — the second career of poorly selling records.
- XRaydio 2 — Vintage Jukebox — XRaydio, Sofia (BG) · aac · 165 kbit/s · no adsA Bulgarian jukebox with mod, vintage soul, and jet-set lounge. Sounds like a bar where the records haven't been swapped out since 1966 — which is exactly the appeal of this selection.
- XRaydio 1 — Kaleidoscope — XRaydio, Sofia (BG) · aac · 164 kbit/s · no ads, communityThe broader sister channel: garage punk, dream pop, acid house, and Americana in the same program. A station that refuses to make up its mind and stays surprisingly coherent anyway.
- Wraith Vision — Wraith Vision, Berlin (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · communityDoo-wop, crooners, and rhythm and blues from the fifties and sixties. The music pop music started with, played without the nostalgia filter oldies stations usually lay over it — as if the recordings had just come out.
- R.SA Ostrock — R.SA, Leipzig (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · localRock music from East Germany — Puhdys, Karat, Silly, City. A music history that ran parallel to the Western one for forty years and that almost nobody outside East Germany knows to this day.
Finds 15 stations
Regional and curious finds from around the world.
- ByteFM — ByteFM, Hamburg (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · human host, community, no adsA listener-funded Hamburg station practicing music journalism in the best sense since 2008: shows with a theme, research, and a point of view instead of a rotation playlist. The closest German counterpart to WFMU.
- WDR Cosmo — WDR, Köln (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · human host, no adsWDR's world-music channel, grown out of the sixties program for guest workers. Today the best German-language source for global pop, Afrobeats, and Turkish psychedelia.
- Radio Méga — Radio Méga, Valence (FR) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · community, human host, no adsA free radio from the provinces along the Rhône, part of the French network of independent local stations. Broadcasts at 320 kbit/s with a selection that pays no mind to reach.
- Ancient FM — Ancient FM, Toronto (CA) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalExclusively medieval and Renaissance music, played on period instruments. A station nobody would think to invent, which is exactly why it exists — for over fifteen years now.
- Nhyira FM 104.5 — Multimedia Group, Kumasi (GH) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · local, human hostA station from Kumasi, Ghana's second-largest city, with programming mostly in Twi. Highlife, gospel, and long talk shows in a language almost no European listener understands — and it works anyway.
- LagosJump Radio — LagosJump, Lagos (NG) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · local, live DJAn online station from Lagos, mapping Nigeria's music scene up close rather than by way of Western charts. Afrobeats sounds different when it hasn't been sorted for export.
- Yabiladi Chaabi — Yabiladi, Casablanca (MA) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · localChaabi is Moroccan folk music for festivals and weddings, loud, repetitive, and almost unknown in Europe. This station plays it without the soft focus world-music compilations like to apply.
- Yurd FM — Yurd FM, Baku (AZ) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · local, human hostAn Azerbaijani station with mugham, the local modal art music, mixed in with current pop. Music from a region that sits culturally between Persia, Turkey, and Russia and belongs to none of them.
- Radyo Şiran — Radyo Şiran, Şiran (TR) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · local, communityA small-town station from Şiran in northeastern Anatolia, with Turkish folk music and local news. So small and so local that while listening, you can be fairly sure how many people are tuned in.
- Bamtaare FM 103.4 — Bamtaare FM, Dodel (SN) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · local, communityA village station from Senegal, broadcasting in Pulaar for the region along the Senegal River. Community radio in its most original form — announcements, music, people passing word to each other.
- Radio Armisa — Radio Armisa, Bergamo (IT) · aac · 195 kbit/s · local, communityAn Italian provincial station from the Bergamo countryside with surprisingly good sound quality. Italian pop music away from the Sanremo axis, with local news from a valley almost nobody knows.
- NTS Field Recordings — NTS Radio, London (GB) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · instrumental, no ads, at nightNot a music channel, but field recordings throughout: rainforests, subway stations, marketplaces, thunderstorms. The strangest show in the whole catalog, and surprisingly good at changing a room.
- SomaFM Boot Liquor — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · no ads, human hostAmericana and alt-country for people who can't do anything with Nashville — raw, thinly produced, often from labels nobody's heard of. At 320 kbit/s, the best-sounding channel the house has.
- SomaFM ThistleRadio — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsCeltic music and its relatives around the world — from Scottish ballads through Breton dance music to Canadian fiddle. Shows how far a tradition can travel when emigrants take it with them.
- SomaFM Black Rock FM — SomaFM, Black Rock City (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, communityThe radio of the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, which keeps broadcasting for the rest of the year. A mix of desert techno, announcements to a city that only exists one week a year, and things hard to classify.
The shelf that depends most on your connection: classical loses more in compression than other music, because quiet passages and overtones go first. Lossless classical streams are rare — what a station delivers is on its card, and where it matters, so is the connection it needs.
- France Musique — Radio France, Paris (FR) · aac · 194 kbit/s · no ads, human hostThe classical channel of French public broadcasting, with its own orchestras and live broadcasts from the Auditorium. Broadcasts in a hi-fi version at 48 kHz — audibly more space than the usual 44.1.
- Radio Swiss Classic — SRG SSR, Bern (CH) · aac · 192 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalAd-free, license-fee funded, classical around the clock with no hosting between pieces. At 192 kbit/s AAC, one of the cleanest freely available classical streams around. No talk segment interrupts, no jingle — the music plays until it's over.
- ČRo D-dur — Český rozhlas, Prag (CZ) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsThe classical channel of Czech public broadcasting, with a conspicuous amount of Czech repertoire — Janáček, Martinů, Suk. Composers who rarely get past Dvořák in German-language programming.
- BR-Klassik — Bayerischer Rundfunk, München (DE) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, human hostWith its own symphony orchestra and choir, whose recordings run regularly in the program. Talk segments between pieces explain what's coming next — the kind of radio where you learn something on the side.
- NDR Kultur — Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Hamburg (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, human hostClassical with literature, radio drama, and conversation mixed in. If you want music without a single word, Radio Swiss Classic is the better fit — here, talking is part of the program. A culture station in the old sense, treating music and language as belonging together.
- Ö1 — ORF, Wien (AT) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no ads, human hostThe culture station of Austrian public broadcasting, since 1967. Classical, new music, science, and features in one program — an institution in Vienna, barely known outside it. A station you switch on and end up having heard something other than what you planned.
- KUSC — University of Southern California, Los Angeles (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · community, no adsThe largest listener-funded classical station in the US, backed by a university in Los Angeles. American classical radio sounds more approachable than European — less reverence, more storytelling.
- WQXR — New York Public Radio, New York (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · community, no adsNew York's classical station since 1936, once owned by the New York Times, now listener-funded. Regularly broadcasts from Carnegie Hall and the city's orchestras. The best address in the catalog for American orchestras and American composers.
- Venice Classic Radio — Venice Classic Radio, Venedig (IT) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalA small Venetian station focused on baroque and Italian repertoire — Vivaldi, Albinoni, Marcello, in their own city. Ad-free and unhosted. If you want to hear baroque as repertoire rather than background, this is where the depth is.
- Early Music — laut.fm, Konstanz (DE) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · instrumental, no adsExclusively early music: medieval, Renaissance, early baroque, on period instruments. The counterpart to Ancient FM over in Curiosities — same field, different hand. Music from centuries when concert pitch wasn't yet fixed at 440 Hz.
- WALM 2 HD — WALM Radio, New York (US) · opus · 192 kbit/s · no ads, losslessClassical off original shellac records, broadcast in Opus at 192 kbit/s. The same people who run Adroit Jazz over on the jazz shelf — you hear the record, not the remastered reissue.
- Fine Music Radio — Fine Music Radio, Kapstadt (ZA) · aac · 128 kbit/s · community, no ads, human hostClassical and jazz from Cape Town, made by volunteers. The only station on this shelf that plays both on equal footing — and the only one from the African continent.
- WCPE The Classical Station — Educational Information Corporation, Wake Forest (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, human hostPut on the air in 1978 by five students from North Carolina, with home-built gear and army-surplus equipment. Today it plays classical music around the clock, carried by its listeners — and was one of the very first stations to stream on the internet.
Jazz and what borders on it.
- Adroit Jazz Underground — WALM Radio, New York (US) · mp3 · 253 kbit/s · no ads, human hostA New York station playing jazz off original shellac and vinyl records, crackle and all. You actually hear the record, not the remastered reissue — a difference you won't want to miss after two tracks.
- Classic Vinyl HD — WALM Radio, New York (US) · mp3 · 281 kbit/s · no adsThe sister channel to Adroit Jazz, with recordings from the twenties through the fifties, also straight off the record. Radio as archive visit — tracks here haven't been digitized by anyone in seventy years.
- Jazz24 — KNKX, Seattle (US) · aac · 256 kbit/s · human host, no adsThe jazz channel of public station KNKX out of Seattle, hosted by people who know their records. At 256 kbit/s AAC, one of the best-sounding jazz streams around, without the elevator-music lean of many smooth jazz stations.
- WBGO Jazz 88.3 — WBGO, Newark (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · human host, communityThe jazz station out of Newark, listener-funded since 1979 and the most important jazz station on the American East Coast. Broadcasts right out of the city where many of the recordings it plays were made.
- KJazz Bebop Channel — KJazz, Long Beach (US) · aac · 128 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalA specialist channel playing bebop exclusively — Parker, Gillespie, Powell, and their successors, nothing after. That narrowness is the strength: if you want bebop, you don't want to land on fusion after three tracks.
- Ella Radio Bebop — Ella Radio, Hamburg (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no ads, instrumentalA small Hamburg jazz station with several specialist channels, this one for bebop and hard bop. German jazz radio has become rare — this one runs without advertising and with palpable expertise.
- Ashiya Radio — Ashiya Radio, Ashiya (JP) · aac · 193 kbit/s · local, human hostA local station from the small town of Ashiya between Osaka and Kobe, playing a surprising amount of jazz between Japanese local news. Radio from a slice of Japanese everyday life a European would otherwise never hear.
- SomaFM The In-Sound — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no adsMod jazz, soul jazz, and European film music from the sixties — the music of coffeehouses before it turned into lounge kitsch. Closer to Blue Note than easy listening, with a feel for the moments when both were the same thing.
- SomaFM Bossa Beyond — SomaFM, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no adsBossa nova and what came after, including modern Brazilian electronic music and European arrangements. Considerably broader than pure bossa stations, which makes it the more interesting address for a genre that otherwise turns into wallpaper fast.
- TSF Jazz — TSF Jazz, Paris (FR) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · human hostThe Paris jazz station, a fixture in France. Hosted throughout, with a preference for what's just come out — not an archive station, but one that keeps up with what's happening in the clubs.
- Concertzender Jazz — Concertzender, Utrecht (NL) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · no ads, community, human hostThe Dutch Concertzender is made by volunteers and funds itself without advertising. The jazz channel is correspondingly headstrong: shows that follow an idea instead of a playlist, often an hour long on a single musician.
- Radio Swiss Jazz — SRG SSR, Bern (CH) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsThe jazz channel of Swiss public broadcasting, ad-free and unhosted — music plays, nothing else. The most unruffled way to have jazz running in the background without anyone talking over it.
- XJAZZ! Movin’ Grooves — XJAZZ, Berlin (DE) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · no adsThe groove channel of Berlin's XJAZZ Festival, at 320 kbit/s one of the best-sounding jazz streams around. Jazz with a pulse: jazz-funk, broken beat, tracks where the bass sets the direction.
- XJAZZ! Electronic Improvisation — XJAZZ, Berlin (DE) · mp3 · 320 kbit/s · no adsThe channel where jazz and electronic music don't alternate but interpenetrate — improvised music with machines inside it. If you're at home in the Engine Room but still miss horns, start here.
- Le Grigri — Le Grigri, Frankreich (FR) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no ads, communityA small French station throwing African music, free jazz, and hip-hop into the same pot and stirring. Exactly the kind of neighborhood where genre mixes come about that nobody else would play.
- KLCBS Fusion — KLCBS, Bandung (ID) · aac · 130 kbit/s · instrumentalKLCBS calls itself “The Jazz Wave” and broadcasts from Bandung on Java. The fusion channel plays what counts as jazz in Indonesia — and that's considerably closer to Weather Report than to Wynton Marsalis.
- WWOZ — WWOZ New Orleans, New Orleans (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no ads, community, human host, localNew Orleans's community radio, carried by listeners and volunteer hosts. Not a jazz station in the museum sense, but the station of a city where jazz is functional music — brass bands, funk, and everything that comes with it.
- WNUR — Northwestern University, Evanston (US) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no ads, community, human hostStudent radio near Chicago, famous for decades for two things: its jazz programming and “Streetbeat.” If you want to hear what a station sounds like when nobody's telling it what to play, listen in here.
- Rádio Unisinos — Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, São Leopoldo (BR) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no ads, communityUniversity radio from southern Brazil. Bossa nova and Brazilian music, but broadcast from the country itself instead of a European lounge channel — the difference is noticeable after two tracks.
- KMHD2 — Mt. Hood Community College, Portland (US) · aac · 128 kbit/s · community, human host, no adsThe second channel of Portland's jazz station, listener-supported and ad-free. Where the main channel plays the standards, this one goes further out — to where jazz stops following rules.
- The Jazz Groove — Foundation to Advance Jazz, San Francisco (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · no adsA non-profit jazz station from San Francisco, funded by donations instead of ads. Every hour is put together by hand from a collection of more than ten thousand recordings — laid-back jazz that still never slips into the bland.
Mainstream, clearly marked. What's here is what everyone knows — for visitors looking for something familiar. From here it's just a few shelves to music you've never heard.
- New Wave Radio — New Wave Radio, unbekannt (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · 80sThe more accessible side of new wave: Cure, Kate Bush, Duran Duran instead of rarities. If Underground 80s has too much unfamiliar material for you, this is the right place. The website carries ads; whether the stream itself does could not be determined.
- RauteMusik 80s — RauteMusik GmbH, Köln (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no ads, 80sThe decade's broad hits, no pretense of discovery — the counterpart to Underground 80s and Italopower. RauteMusik has broadcast from Cologne since 2003, and the individual channels run without ad breaks.
- RauteMusik 90s — RauteMusik GmbH, Köln (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no ads, 90sSame principle, one decade later: nineties pop and charts, broad rather than curated. Fills the gap that would otherwise sit open between Eurodance and grunge. If you want to hear the nineties as a whole rather than sliced by genre, this is the place.
- RauteMusik Trance — RauteMusik GmbH, Köln (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · no ads, 90s, instrumentalTrance from the nineties to today — so not just the rearview mirror. Still one of the cleanest freely available sources for Robert Miles, Paul van Dyk, and Cosmic Gate, and without ad breaks.
- 181.FM Old School HipHop — 181.FM, Waynesboro (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · 90s, human hostWu-Tang, A Tribe Called Quest, TLC, Boyz II Men — the hip-hop and R&B side of the nineties that was missing from the shop entirely until now. Just short station IDs instead of ad blocks. The station has run out of Virginia since 2001 and has preserved the sound of the era instead of polishing it up.
- 181.FM 90s Alternative — 181.FM, Waynesboro (US) · mp3 · 128 kbit/s · 90sNirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots. Guitars as a counterweight to a shelf that would otherwise list heavily electronic. Recordings from the years a regional Seattle scene became world music within months.
- 1.FM 90s Best — 1.FM AG, Baar (CH) · mp3 · 256 kbit/s · 90sBroad nineties pop music from Switzerland, and at 256 kbit/s the best-sounding entry on this shelf. 1.FM has broadcast since the earliest days of web radio. From boy bands to Britpop, without the scissors other stations take to anything that doesn't sound catchy today.
- 90s90s Eurodance — REGIOCAST, Kiel (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · 90s2 Unlimited, Snap!, Culture Beat, Dr. Alban — Eurodance with no apology. Exactly the genre that divides opinion and that hadn't shown up in the shop before. Music that lived off cheap synthesizers, rapped verses, and sung choruses — and ruled the charts for half a decade.
- 90s90s Grunge — REGIOCAST, Kiel (DE) · mp3 · 192 kbit/s · 90sThe same genre as 181.FM 90s Alternative, but from a German vantage point and with a different rotation. Listen to both side by side and you'll quickly notice how differently the same decade gets remembered.
