Show HN: Air traffic control radio and chill music for focus | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Air traffic control radio and chill music for focus

chillyatc.com

201 pointsusernameis42127 comments

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Please give credit to SomaFM if you are going to use their steam.

They even have a similar station: https://somafm.com/sf1033/

But it’s the SFPD police scanner + chill beats instead of ATC.

Yep, I thought the same thing, and this slightly different URL used to give just the SFPD audio:

https://somafm.com/scanner/

I hope that props will be given to SomaFM for their stream and original idea.

I’ve been listening to SomaFM since 2000! Legendary station.

havent all the PDs across the country switched to encrypted radio coms? and how is this supposed to be relaxing when you could hear a cop screaming for backup after being shot in his pelvis?

Officers getting shot is super rare in SF.

South or Midwest is a different story, of course.

Its not different anywhere else. Cops getting shot in general is incredibly rare.

Doesn't have to be getting shot, but I'd say that the probability of non-routine calls that could disrupt your focus is much greater for police radio then for ATC, so it's good that OP chose ATC instead...

You got it backwards, cops rarely ever get shot, its the cops doing the shooting of others. The vast majority of cop injuries are self-inflicted from trying to play out their action movie fantasies driving their cars recklessly and getting into accidents, with a few "They broke my hand with their face/skull" thrown in. And even then their injury rate is still significantly below regular blue collar workers.

In SF, the initial dispatch is still in the clear. But a lot of EMS/Fire traffic is unencrypted, as is certain "event" radio traffic. The SF Police Commission doesn't want SF to have a totally encrypted radio system for accountability reasons.

Wow. I didn't know about this (or might have, as I an obsession with trying to hunt for interesting online tools/services/things, but had never tried). Thank you for mentioning it here! This is awesome. I am loving 'Suburbs of Goa' station. Will explore more.

Also check out http://di.fm - Goa out the up the wazoo. Other electronic music too.

Also their sister sites of Jazz or Rock are your thing, link on their home page somewhere.

oh wow, nice to see that Digitally Imported is still in business. I used to listen to them like 20 years ago when it was still possible to stream DI through WinAMP :)

Helped me get through University a lot

I started listening to them in the late 90s or early 2000s. These days I've been a subscriber for years. I even one time did their fun little puzzle they had in their view source that was a recruiting tool. (I did let them know I did it, but wasn't on the market lol)

They're one of the OGs of internet radio. Radio Paradise too. Probably a couple more I'm forgetting.

Hey Rusty! Keep up the great work. We appreciate you.

You still can if you’re a subscriber, there’s a section in the settings that lets you download a .pls

I used to listen to Digitally Imported's Eurodance station a lot 10-15 years ago, but eventually it felt like I just kept hearing the same songs, that they never added any new music to it.

Yea, they should at least get credit, if not an ongoing donation. AFAIK SomaFM runs entirely on user donations, so rebranding their service without even mentioning them seems kind of crass.

Thank you for introducing me to SomaFM... been online so long and never ran across this.

One of the greatest if not the best online radio stations of all time, in my opinion. Been listening for close to 20 years.

Nerd show Thursday night (8pst?) on Defcon radio is amazing.

I present you Honest ChillyATC: https://honest-chillyatc.vercel.app/

Don’t forget Mission Control also from SomaFM, ambient chill with space mission audio comms

https://somafm.com/player24/station/missioncontrol

Done, credits are placed, revamped the stream a bit, should be more stable.

Thank you for contributing to the enshittication of the web. We keep our streams open so our listeners can easily and freely access us, unlike most other internet radio services. But if things like this get any traction, we're going to have to start restricting them.

We are paying for your little hobby. SomaFM pays close to $100k a year now on music royalties. We pay based on a per-listener, per-song basis. Sites like yours cost us money even when someone only checks it out for a few seconds.

SomaFM is a tiny organization, we're not some VC-funded startup.

What you're doing is exploiting us.

It's not cool.

Sure, I understand, it’s just proof of concept and I selected your platform as one of the best ones, I will pause the stream for now, is there anyway we could chat, if you’re willing to?

Our email isn't a secret https://somafm.com/contact/

It's still not paused, Olzhas. Putting their player inside an iframe and giving them credit isn't paying their bills.

Also you're still violating LiveATC's TOS.

You are costing us money. We have to pay royalties to the artist for each person who hears even part of a track. We do not have ads in the streams.

Why are you being so stubborn about honoring our request? Why not play creative commons music, embed SoundCloud tracks, or make your own music mix and pay the royalties on that.

Don't steal our content (that we have to pay royalties for each listener on) for your "proof of concept".

My bad, what I thought will be little experiment turned out to something bigger, I really appreciate and respect your work, I took my lessons out of this, stream changed to SoundCloud, in the future I consider to use AI generated chill music stream if there will be any good one soon.

Thank you and I apologize one more time, SomaFM is a legendary and something that I love personally, all the best, Olzhas Y.

P.S. Please tell if there is any other questions left.

There was this: https://www.lofiatc.com

However it is down.

This appears to be

SomaFM https://somafm.com/groovesalad/

plus

LiveATC https://www.liveatc.net

Ah, that explains the good music selection!

Yeah these days I just go to LiveATC and start my own choice of music before I start my day. I used LofiATC and it gave me this hobit.

Judging by what happened to LofiATC though, it seems LiveATC was not fond of this kind of things.

They speak a seemingly different language to the untrained ear, here is a good reference to better understand their shorthand and phraseology: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim_html...

This is just a crappy ChatGPT-generated site ripping off the SOMA FM _Groove Salad_ stream (https://somafm.com/player24/station/groovesalad). What's the matter, is creating something original too much work for you? Have to go rip off someone else's work because you're too damn lazy to put in the effort?

Who are you judging here? It’s my experience and experiment, I’m glad for the feedback and have my takeaways out of this, do you want to share something meaningful or just came to share hate?

You seem to be ignoring rustyhodge's multiple comments asking you to stop using Soma's station. Do you mind responding to those comments?

Sure, I was considering all the feedback, stream now changed to Soundcloud, lesson learned and I really appreciate it! Much Love!

Seems like this is SomaFM re-wrapped. If you dig this general idea, the Mission Control station on Soma is undefeated: https://somafm.com/player24/station/missioncontrol.

Pretty cool! I remember there was https://www.lofiatc.com/ but looks like it got blocked?

Yes, lofiatc is not available at the moment

Yeah, I used to use LoFi ATC, but it stopped working. Built something to scratch the itch: https://tonygaeta.com/labs/atc-lofi. OP’s design is solid—great site with good options.

Any idea why only a handful of airports can be selected?

I could add some more, there is feedback form on the page, feel free to make a request or ask questions

Don't get me wrong, but I think this is a perfectly good place for a feedback, since you made the Show HN post. There is no need to redirect users to Google Forms.

Yes, thats true, thank you! For sure, it is the place for it.

DCA please!

and SEA, please! :)

It was actually more a technical question, the site uses LiveATC streams, there doesn't seem to be any specific reason to limit which stream the user chooses, I was just wondering if there was any particular reason for it. Maybe you could include an 'advanced' section where users can enter their own stream code (e.g. not 'ksfo_twr' but 'lhbp_app2' or whatever?

ATC works for me but not music, I get the following error in the console: Playback error: DOMException: The media resource indicated by the src attribute or assigned media provider object was not suitable

Should work better now, I guess it's HN effect, will consider updating stream providers in the future, thanks for update!

Very similar to the Scanner Grannies of the last century.

Back before talk radio was everywhere, old ladies would put on a scanner in the kitchen and leave it on for days, weeks, years just for company.

Sometimes they'd put on the local easy listening station at the same time to fill in the gaps between scanner traffic.

Thanks for this term, that's quite interesting! But it's kind of strange that this turns up only in 5 Google results.

This was in the world before there was a Google.

I was a journalist, and scanner grannies regularly called the assignment desk to make sure we hadn't missed something they heard.

I present you Honest ChillyATC: https://honest-chillyatc.vercel.app/

Edit: Added Airport and chill music station dropdowns.

I thought it wasn't really cool to embed these streams from volunteer-run (both), donation-supported (SomaFM) and grift it with BuyMeACoffee/Product Hunt. And when SomaFM doesn't like it and reasonably blocks it through CORS, to proxy around it. And not respond to anyone bringing it up here.

This should be the comment.

Or, like, go buy a couple thousand chill tracks, an VHF radio, and actually build your own project.

Don't forget "pay the music royalties"

Excellent. I appreciate what you've done there!

Appreciate that

I would add a toggle for disabling the clouds animation. It wastes a lot of CPU cycles for me.

Sure, will consider this and implement soon, thanks for sharing!

Was going to say the same. Very cool concept, thank you.

Also consider disabling it by default for the `@media (prefers-reduced-motion)` CSS query.

Done, it's added to the top panel (cloud icon)

Yeah that one made my laptop absolutely chug. I want to listen to the page while reading a writeup of why such a simple graphical effect is so inefficiently rendered.

UPD2: I want to thank HN for the great feedback, and I'm very glad many people liked the service, there is couple of agreements that are under review at the moment, so you might face some interruptions of the stream, I'm working on stabilizing it, hopefully this will be solved soon.

Olzhas, Please remove Groove Salad (and/and any other SomaFM stations) from your site. Not sure what you mean by "agreements that are under review" but stop trying to get around our blocks.

Your behavior is unprofessional.

Reminds me of You Are Listening To... when you could select the city and the soundcloud tracks.

https://youarelistening.to/newyork

This is very good indeed! Anyways I've been working with stuff like "Apollo 12 – Lunar Lift-Off/Rendezvous/Docking/LM Jettison (Full Mission 20) " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfAgzy-TW1g as background :)

When I turned on the music and chatter, the first audio that played was of a chimpanzee wildly shrieking for about 2 seconds. The song which played after was “Sonargaon” by Daniel Masson, which as far as I can tell does not include that audio. Maybe someone at the KSFO Tower was having a bad day. Very funny.

Yeah, that's the pretty part of the life chatter XD

“You’re on guard”

My 8cores CPU goes to 99% when i visit your website. There's something wrong.

Probably cloud animations, will make a fix for that one.

Brilliant idea. Although I can't seem to connect to get air traffic audio.

I'm weird and often listen to 3 music track simultaneously for optimal flow state / concentration. Typically chillwave|retrowave at high volume, then a couple of other music tracks at much lower volume (if they contain lyrics, I usually like it if I can't distinguish words, so my brain's internal dialogue isn't competing).

Thank you for making this, @usernameis42: I was still looking for my 2025 "to sponsor" project. I'm donating to SomaFM now!

Perfect, they definitely deserve it! <3

Feature request: an alarm clock mode that gradually fades in stall warnings and mayday chatter when you need to wake up.

I’ve always thought that Enterprise D idling for sleeping too, and the alarm clock is the ship going to warp VERY LOUDLY.

Congratulations. That is very well done, indeed, and the music selection is right up my alley.

(FYI: Working on Ubuntu with standard Firefox, no problems at all.)

Thanks for this, whoever you are :-)

Will try to slide you some cash, when possible. You have made my day brighter, friend. Love and peace to you.

The music selection is indeed quite good, but I would try to make sure that there are no vocals in the music — those overlap with ATC too unpleasantly for me.

It’s SomaFM. OP has nothing to do with the music selection.

Glad to hear that, really appreciate that I made your day brighter! Love and peace!

Quick request: Could you add a toggle for the cloud animation? I like to keep my processors cool :-)

OP will ask you to use Google Contact Form :)

Done, use cloud icon in the top panel

That's fantastic! And you just gained a supporter. Enjoy your 'coffee' :-)

Compassion will fix this world, my dear friend, spread the word!

Thank you so much for the support! Really appreciate it, this is my first launch ever and I really glad to see that people love it and even support it! <3

Thank you dear friend, will spread the word!

He's abusing LiveATC.net and somafm.com 's bandwidth, as well as royalty payments made by somafm.com (See comments on this page from rustyhodge, the operator of somafm.com), giving him "coffee money" is encouraging the thievery.

I can't and wouldn't argue with what you say here, but:

a) I donated twice as much to somafm

b) His connecting me with somafm was worth the donation to him. Besides, as an aspiring sw artist, I like to sow good karma seeds.

That said, I would recommend he pay out his sources both fairly and according to their terms. Their terms are their choice, and we should respect them.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. We live and we learn, when we're at our best.

Slide a little support to SomaFM - that's where the music is coming from.

Good call, I sent them a chunk because that's the part I'm gonna use.

I haven't heard a track I didn't like yet. Nice service. I hope they pay the artists.

https://youarelistening.to/ has been doing this for a while (with better ambient music) - granted not a livestream, but the idea.

Question: any chance I can have this as a radio station in my Alexa??

Great idea, will research it!

UPD: You could disable cloud animation, button is added to the top panel, thank you for feedback everyone, hope you're enjoying it! Please share any other suggestions or feedback if you could.

Can you add SoCal (ZLA) approach/departure? There's bound to be lot more audio for the traffic for a general area than a specific airport tower.

Approach/Departure is SCT (SoCal Tracon), ZLA is Los Angeles Center (en route/ARTCC). While there'll be more traffic, it's still spread out across a bunch of sectors that are each typically their own feed.

Ah. Fair enough.

And yea, you are right about ZLA vs SCT. I think I mostly fly around SCT and don't venture out much into the wider ZLA area. :)

Same...only really talk to center on long xc's with FF

This is awesome. Where do you get this music stream?

It just loads this https://somafm.com/groovesalad/

Hopefully OP is going to give them some (a lot of?) money, considering there's a promiment link to Product Hunt that says "Launching soon", and nothing on today's Internet is made just for fun anymore, but for $$$$.

Oh yeah the ATC radio is also directly from liveatc.net servers, which says on their site: "NOTICE: Third-party use of LiveATC live audio streams is prohibited." and this site probably violates many points on https://www.liveatc.net/legal/ (unless, OP did get their permission to do this...).

OpenAI et al have taught us that breaking millions of website ToCs is completely meaningless.

Soma rightfully seem to have just enabled CORS though after seeing this traffic spike.

Edit: And now OP just started proxying around it, hilariously adversarial when embedding a donation-based service.

So it's like youarelistening.to but for ATC?

Yes, it's kinda same, ATC communications have a specific rhythm and cadence, the speech is professional, neutral, and emotionally detached, combination with ambient music creates an audio cocoon that helps easily get into flow state and increase your productivity

I love the music but fly for a living so my brain is tuned to instantly drop what im doing and laser focus when I hear ATC comms lol.

The idea that air traffic control radio can be chill when multiple CRJs crashed within weeks is questionable.

Not working for me. Switched to Toronto not connecting either Samsung Galaxy tab s9 fe+ canada android 14

Did you enable the toggle in the "Audio Controls" section? That's what got me at first.

That's some strange UX! Usually a drop down without a button would be associated with an affirmative choice in this day and age.

I agree, I would add a default "nothing" entry in the drop down and enable both ATC feed and the music when an option is clicked.

Will try to enhance that one, thanks for sharing feedback

That or move the toggle up closer to the drop down, though then you have to consider moving the volume slider

Probably network issues? Have you tried wifi or other network? Yes, also make sure all toggles are on :)

Are there any other live streams like this that one can play in the background?

I am aware of liveatc and broadcastify.

ATC selection menu does not work properly on IOS safari

It's me or it's very slow on edge ?

Will check that as well, there is feedback form in the footer, if anyone has some suggestions please share it there, thank you!

Awesome!!!

Genius. There should be a whole bunch of these mashups.

Would love some old Apollo capcom with music.

SomaFM's Mission Control gets you there, kinda:

https://somafm.com/player24/station/missioncontrol

Great idea, will process it, thank you!

asks me to login and the music never loads...

Applied some fixes, should work now

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