r/radio

I was looking through FCC data for the Anchorage radio market only to be completely surprised how a group of stations under the same ownership are all under different towers. What’s confusing for me is one tower holds multiple stations that are owned by different groups.

For example IHeart owns 4 FM stations in my area and most of them are on different towers. But a competitor like Connoisseur media(merged with Alpha Media) will share the same tower with Iheart and also has multiple stations spread out on different towers. Neither of these companies own any of the towers.

Another group Ohana Media Group owns one of the towers but doesn’t even have all their radio stations on the tower they own. The tower they own also has a tv transmitter on it ran by bridge news with a bunch of junk digital sub channels.

Wouldn’t it be most cost effective for these radio station owners to use the same tower for all of their stations.

I thought you folks might enjoy this. Over the coming weeks I will be archiving more episodes to YouTube.

I've been researching the state of international community, independent and internet radio and wanted to share a few of my favorites so far and some cool websites I found in the process.

To start, here are some awesome lists and websites

Monoskop’s like a wiki for the arts. Extremely European focused with the occasional exception 

https://monoskop.org/Community_radio

Freeform Radio Directory is the new version of the Underground Radio Directory 

https://www.freeformradio.directory

https://web.archive.org/web/20230922135046/https://www.undergroundradiodirectory.com/

Brooklyn’s Pirate Radio Map. It’s like radio garden but for Brooklyn

https://map.pirateradiomap.com

If you’re comfortable with GitHub, these 2 repos have a collection that is somewhat maintained

https://github.com/mikepierce/internet-radio-streams

https://github.com/deroverda/recommended-radio-streams

This is the project I've been dumping my research into.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/setto-fm-curated-radio/id6772599175

From this point on I'm just going to nerd out and yap about the stations I hyper fixated on.

Rytmabad https://rytmabad.com

Station from Uzbekistan that features a lot of DJs from Tashkent and central asian countries. Low key my favorite rabbit hole so far. I can't find any information about the station outside their website. Like there's a DJ who wears a suit of armor and I'd love more context on why but have no leads. Their rotation seems to lean more electro from my listening experience. I've also tuned into to them playing obscure Japanese x Dutch electro / pop fusion and American emo

KCHUNG Radio & BFF.fm https://www.kchungradio.org/stream & Bff.fm 

They’re both community radio stations from Cali focusing on smaller and local artists from their respective areas. BFF is like San Francisco without the tech bros and KCHUNG operates out of LA Chinatown. Actually used to volunteer at BFF and they have a lot of cool events that are worth a visit. The actual physical station is cool, it’s what I imagined San Francisco looked like when I played Watch Dogs 2

If you’re curious, BFF stands for Best Frequencies Forever. 

Radio Alhara https://radioalhara.net

Another cool community radio station based out of Palestine. I’d describe the rotation as eclectic. But in like an extremely underground way. Similar to the background music at record stores

Norrrm https://www.norrm.com

Community radio from Indonesia

KJHK 90.7 FM https://kjhk.org

College radio from Kansas. Rock Chalk!

Mouthful Radio https://mouthfull.live

Community radio from New Zealand 

UCT Radio https://uct.ac.za/radio/live-stream

College radio from Cape Town

The following stations are underground but big enough that you can find an article or dedicated wiki about them

NTS https://www.nts.live

NTS technically isn’t a single internet radio station anymore. I think it’s better to describe it as a collective.

They have a lot of stuff going on, infinite mixtapes and IRL events. I’m sure someone in the comments can provide an intense amount of lore

SoHo Radio https://sohoradio.com

It’s really good. I love Morning Glory and Soho Skank wid D'Oxman

Oroko Radio  https://oroko.live

Similar tier of quality to NTS and SoHo 

SomaFM https://somafm.com

30 streams of curated tracks. Groove Salaad is really popular but I personally like Underground 80s more

KEXP https://www.kexp.org

You can’t do a google or reddit search for internet radio without someone mentioning KEXP

WFMU https://wfmu.org

Just like KEXP, you can’t avoid it 

The Lot Radio https://www.thelotradio.com

Not sure how to best describe their vibe but if you enjoy Jersey club and adjacent genres, that’s the vibe. Maybe dance is the right term

Netil Radio from the UK https://netilradio.com

Kiosk Radio from Brussels https://www.kioskradio.com

The House & Garage internet radio community is an even deeper rabbit hole.  

Rinse FM started as UK Pirate Radio and then become a legitimate collection of stations.

They have like 4 stations. 

https://www.rinse.fm

Seoul Community Radio is also cool but doesn’t broadcast 24/7, only Thursday to Sunday.

Something really interesting is that if you drew a graph connecting each station and where their DJs have been, I’m pretty sure everyone would be like 2 or 3 people away from each other as some names really be everywhere. I’d love to keep going but I’ve already yapped enough

The radio station I work at uses simian. If we want to upgrade to the latest version, I think it’s around $2000 (I could be wrong) but it’s also an old system in general so we want to start looking at others. We’re mostly interested in automated updates like weather, log reports for each track, and preferably not cloud based. I’ve heard radioboss is a pretty good alternative but I wanted to know what other people think or use. I’ve gotten pretty good with simian but I’m still new to radio in general.

Can't get Club FM Dublin or old school Dublin on Stream internet radio anymore my WiFi is perfect all other stations???Any answers welcome

Early Canadian adopter here. We've been premium listeners since 2005/06 (somewhere around there).

It's been a pain calling once a year to take advantage of their annual promotions, but we did it faithfully. My premium promotional package increased from $10 to $17 this month, and while I understand that this is a substantial discount from the regular premium package pricing, I made the decision to walk away if the promo guy couldn't come down with the price. It's almost double, and money doesn't grow on trees lately.

I spoke to a guy called Joseph, and he was super nice, tried his best, but we couldn't make it work.

I'm so bummed out.

I'm in LA area. Often times the same set of songs get recycled throughout the day on certain radio stations.

whenever i listen to the radio, the guy that goes like: “you’re listening to 123.45 FM, home of a music genre” the voice always sounds the same. like kinda digital, and it has a weird effect. idrk how to describe it. is this an advertising thing or is there an actual reason. sorry if i’m reading to far into things or if this is a stupid question

Does anyone remember the name (or other details) on the Beatles radio documentary from the early 1970s? Is it on the internet? This was a chronological history of the band including snippets of their songs. The narrator had one of those great “voices of god.” It must have been a syndicated show that local AM radio stations could buy and play on the air.

This is *not* the “The Beatles Story” which is an American LP on Capitol from the early 1960s.

I’m having a very long drive and I want to hear something for the long rides especially at night. What radio stations you guys recommend learning about conspiracy’s or callers talking about their unexplainable stories. Thank you!

Sorry if this post doesn't belong here. Idk where else to post this and just wanted to say Jason Smith and Mike Harmon on FoxSportsRadio are absolutely awful. Their takes are awful, their humor is awful, they don't take any calls from listeners (I wonder why), they're the only duo that make Monse Bolaños sound uncomfortable on air. They're just bad sports radio hosts, anyone else?

Absolute newbie here. Ive had a larger portable radio for some time that works like a dream. Today i came across an alarm clock radio and picked it up. I tuned into the same station i keep my main radio on, but i hear a completely different station. The larger portable radio with telescopic antenna picks up a spotty college radio station while on the same frequency the alarm clock picks up crystal clear classical music without a hint of another station. Ive scanned through on the alarm clock and cannot seem to find the station i’m looking for. Theyre both fm, and within the range on the faceplate. Could this be due to the alarm clock radio’s smaller antenna?