Show HN: Campus FM – live stream college and independent radio stations
campus-fm.com
campus-fm.com
Radio is interesting because there is a required structure (mandated by the FCC) that is fairly strict, but leaves plenty of room for creativity and freedom. Great way to learn how to work within constraints and get the most out of something.
If any college students are reading this, consider joining your school's radio station. It was a great way to meet people and learn.
It's been a blast building this—I've been able to spend a ton of time listening to college radio, and also sharpen my front end skills. Looking for jobs/contracts now if anyone is hiring :)
WUSB https://www.wusb.fm/
WNYU https://wnyu.org/
I used to listen to that all the time growing up in Houston. The blues show was excellent.
https://track-blaster.com/wmbr/index.php
They archive shows for a week or so and provide a link to listen.
Eg
I love listening to these stations, you always get such a great variety of music you probably wouldn't hear much of otherwise. It seems no amount of Spotify AI will rival the taste-making discoverability power of a college hipster behind a DJ set :)
Curious how you chose the default 8 stations? This is obviously super nitpicky but WERS deserves the Boston spot over WHRB IMO. Yeah, Emerson isn't exactly a powerhouse school, but their radio station is a legitimate player in a major radio market in a way that most college radio stations (Harvard's included) aren't. Definitely more important in Boston than WHRB is.
That aside, I'll two stations to your list: my former home station, WRBB, in lovely Boston, Massachusetts, and WMBR across the river in Cambridge.
WERS has professional-level radio production, solid music that has broad appeal without being "mainstream". Emerson is one of the few schools I know of where some people will go to the school specifically for the radio station. It's why they have such a large, consistent listnership.
WMBR's DJs are fantastic. The station itself definitely has a more college feel but it's still very well-produced and the station itself seems to be really good at playing obscure tunes, especially in the psych/garage/punk/shoegaze realm. There's a distinct sort of sound I expect with them that almost reminds me of WFMU where I grew up, which is high praise.
WHRB tends to favor classical and jazz more than the other schools' stations because they dedicate large blocs of time to those genres
And then there's my WRBB. We sometimes had some gaps in production (depending on who was DJing) but it's still a great listen since there tends to be a wider range of tunes that come through the station. It also helped that many of our DJs were stalwarts of the local DIY music scene, so we gave airtime to a lot of small local artists that might not have a ton of promotion otherwise.
Personally, I'll always have a soft spot for WRBB owing to my time there but really you can't go wrong with any of these.
If you're ever in a strange city in a rental car, and want to find a radio station: look between 88 and 92 on the FM dial. That range is reserved for non-profit stations, like these.
You'll also find the local NPR station(s) down there, if there are any.
As some here in the forum I did shows back then on ("independent") stations, love the medium and think there is (too less heard) creativity out there.
..that's also why I built something similar. But with the focus on the shows(!) https://radiobird.fm
Just a german version right now and mostly european stations but with a plan to change that.
* A non-janky solution, like something actually designed for audio.
If you want to record, use the 3.5mm "aux" output or RCA outputs and send the audio to a DAW in your computer. Or record to cassette tape like in the old days.
If you want a programmable radio that's otherwise attached to a computer, it seems like this is not hard to DIY with GNU Radio.
For me the performance was quite good. I could pick up the music anywhere within ~100 ft from a short 6cm wire soldered to a GPIO pin.
Can you add WBGU-FM out of Bowling Green, Ohio?
Took me a bit to figure out clear all would remove them, tapping green meant selected, grey meant not selected, and “Reload new” was like “save new selection”
Instructions for tapping to select/unselect and “save new selection” instead of “reload new” for button label might help
Search 'university' or click 'Geomap'
Broadcasts online and in FM/DAB in the Ayrshire region of Scotland
More impressive to me was the FM license, which allowed people to pick up the station within about a mile of the campus.
I think there's still something to be said for the effort which goes into proper radio station - the scheduling, actually turning up to broadcast the (live) programs at a specific time, phone ins, news segments, etc, and the organisational skills to get 50 or so people working together on a single project.
I also suggest adding WGBH Boston - 89.7 MHz https://www.wgbh.org/Radio
Anyway, add it or don’t, but give it a listen!
If you are looking for more. - Chicago jazz - College of DuPage, in Glen Ellyn, Il wdcb.org
They just need to be indexed like the American ones. I am pretty sure there are Canadian ones (and from other countries) as well.
Incomplete list of just U.K. ones
Could you add KAOS?
There is no search button. When I select Add (+), I can search, but when I select from the search results, nothing plays - it seems to add it to some list, but any controls to actually make it play are either off screen or... something.
I’d like to be able to just search & play. The background loading of multiple streams is only useful if switching a lot, but on mobile it is a bandwidth-buster.
The search results let you add new stations to a queue, but they're not playable until you press "Reload Stations" on the modal—which isn't obvious or intuitive. At the very least I can add some instructions for loading new stations.
I've also explored adding a drag and drop interface, but that's a little trickier than search (technically and design-wise). Will need to think more about it. Thanks for the feedback!
- RUA - Rádio Universitária do Algarve: https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/536?mp=/stream (https://rua.pt/)
- Universidade FM (Vila Real): https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/405?mp=/stream (https://www.universidade.fm/)
- UAL - Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa: https://spaudio.servers.pt/8006/stream (https://ualmedia.pt/radio-autonoma/)
- FEUP - Engenharia Rádio: http://193.136.38.145:8080/live?type=.mp3 (www.engenhariaradio.pt)
- RUM - Rádio Universitária do Minho: https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/558?mp=/stream (https://www.rum.pt/)
- RUC - Rádio Universidade de Coimbra: https://stream.ruc.pt/high (https://www.ruc.pt/)