Radio Garden | Hacker News Reader

Radio Garden

radio.garden

When this first came out I retrieved the list of stations (around 20k, I think it was just a JSON file), converted it to .m3u8, and I have since used it as a playlist for WinAmp. It's playing one of those streams right now, using 4MB of memory and practically no CPU.

Over the years, several streams (or the station themselves unfortunately) have gone offline. To refresh my list I'd have to scrape the "globe", and it doesn't feel like the right thing to do.

Has anyone encountered a similar website, but with a simple list of public streams?

You should be able to do this with radio-browser.info [1]. Specifically, look at the documentation that lists all stations.

[1] - https://de1.api.radio-browser.info/#General

Direct link to a JSON file with ~50k Internet radio stations.

http://de1.api.radio-browser.info/json/stations

> Everyone is free to use the collected data (station names, tags, links to stream, links to homepages, language, country, state) in their works. I give all the rights I have at the accumulated data to the public domain.

https://www.radio-browser.info/

It was a challenge finding something truly foreign. I just kept stumbling across america's best hits of the 80s and 90s, all across the globe. With a steady helping of generic euro-pop.

But some revival preaching in africa really felt like visiting a foreign place, as did some cape town talk radio. Obviously the islamic world has a very different playlist, so that was a gimme. What a neat concept!

"(...) Get into the water, let is splash across your face. Don't you loose your party, don't you loose your faith (...)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Vtg2Oc4IU

Perfect. Thank you. I needed this today. I loved ONE, back in the day.

Have you heard of Lyrics Born? Hearing this track again makes me wonder about their respective influences.

Cool, really happy you like it. I can't decipher/find ONE/Born, thou.

Debut single:

Lyrics Born - Calling Out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-kV6TRs8PU

Um. Just did a quick stroll down memory lane. Ya. Me Phi Me's album ONE hasn't exactly held up well... So here's another movie soundtrack single that I still enjoy:

Me Phi Me ft Jeriko One - Here We Come https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQsmJif3RTA

Revival was on a soundtrack of a (mediocre) movie Reality Bites. It has wonderful sense of South-style communion for me. I remember that was the only song by Me Phi Me, which I enjoyed at that time.

Thx for links, good stuff. Let us keep it up.

When I was first time in Paris, me and friends were blown away by the sheer number of stations and good, rave-class, electronic music on the waves. We used to wander around the city with walkman's on. Sounds weird... good times.

Also, when I was a small kid, used to go to the furthest room in the house, close the door and lay down with small, pocket radio, catching foreign stations on LW. The further, the better.

Radio rocks. Great mash-up.

> when I was a small kid .. lay down with small, pocket radio, catching foreign stations on LW.

I’m long past being a kid and I still do this

That's cool... I would have a hard time finding a radio-set around, though. Few months ago I spent half of a night watching video streams from tokyo public transit stations, so I guess kid inside is doing fine.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37829061 https://minitokyo3d.com/

> lay down with small, pocket radio, catching foreign stations on LW.

You were probably listening to shortwave stations, not longwave. Most international broadcasting was done in the shortwave bands, typically in the range of 3 MHz (100 meter wavelength) to 30 MHz (10 meter wavelength).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortwave_radio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwave

You are right. Short waves, tiny move and you are on another station.

France is amazing for nurturing artists, they make some of the coolest electronic around

Try Finland.

Here I was expecting Finn Tango and I landed on a chiptune station...

Nigeria has lots of good stuff

Your first paragraph is similar to when I first started traveling and was surprised to hear so much American music everywhere. That's when I truly realized the scale of American cultural hegemony and what "soft power" really means.

I assume you're referring to Cape Talk 567 [1], which broadcasts on 567 kHz AM/MW in the Cape Town region. I also enjoy it, although the late night political debates can become tiring. It has a sister talk radio station in Gauteng, Radio 702 [2]. Both are owned by Primedia.

[1] https://www.primediaplus.com/station/capetalk [2] https://www.primediaplus.com/station/702

I love this website! Also, if you like this site, be sure to check out radiooooo.com for a similar premise, but with more of a historical aspect. I'll additionally plug everynoise.com solely because it has every genre of music you've ever heard of, and then thousands more!

Both sites (and radio.garden) are great for finding new music.

Why did I listen to a Lowe's commercial on a radio station from Port Mathurin? For reference, an island in the middle of nowhere in the Indian Ocean: https://radio.garden/visit/accacia/Y2DoPxzU

My guess is they are just streaming spotify on some VPN with a stolen account that puts them in Florida.

I am in Germany, I hear German ads there.

I hear English language ads while listening from Texas.

It seems they embed ads from out local areas to make money.

You will see the timer stop when the ad is playing.

I've heard a lot of German ads on Nigerian stations. Turns out they were all served by zeno.fm ("The easiest way to create and listen to radio stations and podcasts") which seems to proxy local stations, making money from cramming ads into the streams.

If you're in the UK don't bother downloading for the full experience, it still won't let you listen to anything outside of the UK.

Came here to say that! It's a nice app and very innovative, but if I have fire up a f*** VPN every time I want to listen to stations outside the UK, forget it!

I don't think the developers care either: I've emailed numerous times without an answer, and even less-than-favourable reviews on the App Store failed to elicit a response. At least tell us the reason for the UK- hatred if you're not going to fix it?!

It’s a copyright issue.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Garden

“unfortunately the restriction must be extended for an indefinite period due to copyright and neighbouring rights related matters that require clarification. ”

(Edited from original comment): Found the actual cause of the problem: https://mediawrites.law/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/judgment....

Just like TuneIn, they are behaving like a broadcaster and aren't paying license fees, so I guess they are afraid of similar legal action

Not sure if it’s still true but you can disable the check very easily using devtools. No need for a VPN.

Do you happen to know, why are they not using TLS?

“Our original configuration was fully HTTPS-enabled; however, we had to adjust this when browser manufacturers started blocking HTTPS websites from loading HTTP streams.

Approximately 20% of the stations featured on Radio Garden are accessible via HTTP streams, which would become inaccessible if we switched entirely to HTTPS. Given the recent changes in Chrome's behavior towards forcing an HTTPS connection, we are considering moving back to an all-HTTPS setup in the near future.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/RadioGarden/s/0FByul10C0

Thanks! I wish they had a https site that had some mechanism (even manual instruction) to go around that issue.

Try Tor browser

Music rights are a bit of a mess across the Atlantic. PRS/PPL licences don't reciprocate with the American equivalents and vice versa. Either it's two sets of licences (and possibly legal entities) or you end up geo blocking. Though on the up side you can stream to parts of Europe and even Australia from the UK IIRC.

Licencing bodies are also fairly actively monitoring these things. I've had them try to chase me for royalties for services that have been shut down because they're still listed in public directories.

In a similar vein: Shirley and Spinoza - https://compound-eye.org/

Wonderful random sounds from all over the place

can you believe i’ve found this just on pure luck, trying to listen to exotic asian sounds? it’s really isolated as a location. it’s one of my favs

Discussed previously (123 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477771

Shout out to my local school district's radio station

https://radio.garden/visit/wilmington-de/IgIAlhdo

WMPH.net 91.7Mhz FM They play everything from Big Band to Taylor Swift (sometimes even back to back). Give a listen, if nothing else they will go "Wow people from around the world listen to us!"

This also reminds of WebSDR online radio which you can tune just like a real radio

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

There are many of these radios though

http://websdr.org/

http://kiwisdr.com/public/

I'd like to just give some thanks to the author; I use this sometimes when I'm feeling homesick to hear my old local radio stations in the UK. It really quells the feeling of disconnect I sometimes feel to my homeland and gives me comfort when I feel wayward in my spirit.

This is an interesting comment in that the stations in my home town are no longer the same. Clear Channel has come in bought up all (only a slight exaggeration) of the stations. The stations I listened to as a kid are no longer around, and some of the stations that are still on the air are different formats. If child me were to listen to radio today, nothing would be recognizable

largely this is true for me, with the exception of Heart FM and BBC.

However the UK has strong regional accents (especially in ads) and local radio tends to reflect that, which makes me feel like home.

Ah! It is its time to be submitted again. I remember submitting it when I found it a few years back. This pops up once a while (seeing a pattern here) and people loving it.

2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13164058

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427701

2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477771

2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30441847

One of my vague project plans is to convert a world globe so when you touch a location it plays the radio from there.

Like this site but in real life.

When I think of the far reaches of Siberia, I don’t really think of people blasting upbeat euro techno, but there you have it.

It’s a small world

It would be great to have some radio static playing when switching radio stations.

It's a bit like the radio version of http://astronaut.io :)

This is really fun! Reminds me of early internet days when there was fun discovery sites like this.

How exactly was this made? Are online radio streams just so guaranteed to be a consistent, open API for use?

It feels like it would be ridiculously tedious if there were a thousand different ways stations might set up their stream.

In station submission form there's a stream URL field with following restrictions:

The stream may be submitted in MP3, AAC, M3U or PLS format, and must be online 24/7. Please enter a secure HTTPS url if you have one.

Being able to pick radio stations by geolocation is a really nice feature. I can go explore the world! But then it's a bit disappointing how similar many stations sound, no matter where they are.

It went straight to my local radio station and I listened for 2 minutes straight of ads! It was actually kind of weird to hear ads for local businesses, like the pub just down the road.

This is really cool. My wife and I spent a few months in Merida, MX. Great to listen to music broadcast from there. A great city with a few disadvantages. ;)

Favorite stations?

Couple of mine: Hip hop lounge in DC, zootopia Stanford, alpha boys Kingston, Kauai community, soggy dollar BVI, smooth jazz NY

1. Radio Študent Ljubljana - public radio, est. 1969 - https://radio.garden/listen/radio-student-fm-89-3/H12zH5Xj

2. KFFP Freeform Portland - https://radio.garden/listen/kffp-freeform-portland/wgDi5KFv

3. Radio Gugelhopf from Zürich - internet radio - https://radio.garden/listen/radio-gugelhopf/q4oFNLjR

I once had a little radio show (10 episodes or so) exploring radio garden. I picked some, contacted them for permission, talked a bit and was happy. South American classic music (Strawinsky!) vs Korean classic music (way too much Austrian influence, boring), KTRU Houston vs WFMU Jersey, Rwanda free radio as classic example of inciting genocide, lots of interesting history bits.

Beautifully done!

What is the point of this? Why is it here? Is there something special going on?

So many links to web sites happen where one has no clue why it is posted or what it does.

Have you tried using it?

Yes but my point is that you need to use it to initially find out anything about it. What does it do?

Then I question what this does that a simple Google search can't (find local radio stations that play online).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com