[lolive]

Spotify « radio » is the best reason to listen to real radios ! [honestly the DJs on most of the radios I listen to are insanely skilled !]

Btw, is there somewhere a search engine to know when a given [set of] track was played where, in the internet radio world?

[grepexdev]

This! I recently ditched Spotify and rediscovered radio in the past few weeks. There are so many great songs I've come across from bands I enjoy that I had never heard of because, as someone else said, Spotify's algorithm is way overfit.

[10729287]

It's also great sometimes to discover great music from genre you usually don't like, or... just be exposed to songs you don't like. This is what helps building a musical culture.

Please allow me to recommend FIP, as a human (it's a classic here but there's no such thing as recommending too much FIP) : https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip

[j_french]

FIP and NTS are my goto's. The discovery features for shows on NTS and the "in focus" specials are great, so many good opportunities there for serendipitous listening. Will def check out radio paradise

[lolive]

FIP is broadcasting in FM in France, so no big news on that one, for me. But i will investigate NTS. I knew their radios streams, but it seems they also have some pretty niche podcasts !

[conradfr]

Radio Paradise is a great alternative to FIP.

https://radioparadise.com

[lolive]

Both are classics. I like SomaFM-GrooveSalad too. Oh and BBC6, or course. [The podcast of Guy Garvey is an absolut must, in my sunday schedule]

[easyKL]

France Inter Paris (FIP) it's awesome!

And remember you can always get the audio steam through HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), on its M3U format, or others with better quality. There are many Android apps like Transistor to enjoy the stream, and even VLC can open these, in order to avoid using a web browser.

Likewise, I prefer online radios than big tech algorithms that craft my music experience.

[LMSolar]

For a certain range of indie pop, KCRW's Eclectic24 is great: https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/eclectic24

[dv_dt]

I don't know if its the best at this, but I've been listening to radio from around the world at https://radio.garden/

[lawgimenez]

Have you tried searching other user’s playlists instead? At least for me, that’s how I have been using Spotify’s to discover new music.

[Affric]

100%

No algorithm has been able to be able to be as weird but consistent as a community radio DJ.

The radio can still surprise and delight like little else. All the tech companies have been able to replicate is the disappointment.

Not to say never but people’s great advantage here is that they’re people.

[hypercube33]

I respectfully disagree. If you're into classic rock those stations are pivoting around here to 90s and 2000s rock since that's "classic" now. Then you're left with ButtRock stations that play mostly the same thing every day at the same times in the same order. The best radio we had in our area was a college station that has an hour or two of stuff I'm interested in or as close to a legal pirate radio you can get (100w tower) that shut down - THAT was amazing. Had a ton of DJs who played things they liked.

Outside of rock you're left with automated pop and country stations who have computerized playlists.

note - I'm in the Midwest US.

[skyyler]

Community radio DJ. Community being the important part.

Most of the radio stations here in Columbus, Ohio are what you described, the clearchannel / IHeartMedia stations.

However, there is an independent radio station and it's so great. They play Democracy Now! during the daytime and they have a rotating list of shows for the evening. I've heard some really great music during the evening shows.

https://www.wcrsfm.org/

If you're in Columbus, tune in to 98.3 or 92.7 FM!

[Affric]

Thanks for putting it so well.

Commercial radio is the devil.

Classic rock exists to sell lawn mowers to middle aged men

[conradfr]

https://onlineradiobox.com has the data but doesn't search on it it seems.

Disclaimer I make https://www.radio-addict.com but only retrieve the played song data on demand (never tried to probe all 80k+ radio streams at the same time on my small server, could be fun), but searching on it could be a new feature (it's stored in Elixir genservers :D)

[lolive]

"Listen to a random radio" is the summum of serendipity, man ! #kudos

[conradfr]

Thanks.

[lolive]

Wasn't TuneIn providing this search feature before?

[jonesjohnson]

reminds me that i should donate to somafm again :-)

[cess11]

Good idea.

To those who aren't in the know already, it's this:

https://somafm.com/player/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dgmltn.rad...