Comments on: Polka, coming at you live from Valkenswaard!

Polka, coming at you live from Valkenswaard!

AFABulous — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 13:36:43 -0800

Spin the globe and it will start playing live radio wherever you stop. You can also click on a specific place. Libyana 100.1 FM is playing some bangers! Radio Thailand 97 has some good chillout music. Catavento Radio (Brazil) got my hips shaking. There are hundreds (thousands?) of stations. If you get static, just be patient, it will likely snap to the nearest station.

By: JanetLand

JanetLand — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 13:44:33 -0800

Double.

By: Miko

Miko — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 13:47:10 -0800

I almost posted this last month. Bummer it's a double!

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 13:49:24 -0800

Eh, I say it can stay. December world radio party!

By: AFABulous

AFABulous — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 13:50:48 -0800

Hm, seems like there's a flaw in the posting page.

By: bessel functions seem unnecessarily complicated

bessel functions seem unnecessarily complicated — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 13:52:00 -0800

Double or no, thanks for sharing! I'm really enjoying the electronic music on Awya FM in Khartoum Sudan, which is not what I would had expected to be listening to a few minutes ago!

By: AFABulous

AFABulous — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 14:03:59 -0800

This is endlessly entertaining and educational. The Federated States of Micronesia has a channel with English-language Christian country music. Samoa has Beyonce. The Solomon Islands has what I'd expect for "island music." Ushuaia (Argentina) has some sort of mashup between EDM and cumbia (?).

By: Johnny Wallflower

Johnny Wallflower — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 14:31:46 -0800

Never saw the previously, so thanks for leaving it up! This almost justifies the internet.

By: lunasol

lunasol — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 16:37:12 -0800

I just had my mind blown by hearing an ad for Les Schwab Tires on a Ghanaian radio station: I was surprised that 1. Les Schwab Tires exists in Ghana and 2. The ad had a guy speaking with a folksy American accent. Of course, once the ad was over, I realized it was just playing on the stream. The actual radio station delivered the very Afropop I was hoping for.

By: Sequence

Sequence — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 17:13:59 -0800

My Girls Who Code kids this week had found this and were showing it off to each other, which led to a bunch of talking about Indian music--at this point more than half of the class is of Indian descent but their families are from all over and India is a big place. But there a lot of descriptions of things as "ugh this is music that your mom would listen to". I asked what music *they'd* listen to, which led to a bunch of Indian-American middle school girls explaining Jpop to me, visiting Japan's streams, and deciding that Japanese hip-hop was also pretty cool. They had also figured out apparently right after discovering it that no, you cannot get any radio streamed from North Korea. Because of course that's the first thing a bunch of middle school girls want to know about something like this. It was pretty amazing.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 17:44:57 -0800

well, this is just great

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 18:09:14 -0800

Loving this. Also, I now know where I'm getting my maid insurance, next time I'm in Singapore.

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 18:18:55 -0800

I think this should be posted every December, a new holiday tradition.

By: Lyme Drop

Lyme Drop — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 18:40:16 -0800

This is the best.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 19:19:59 -0800

Apparently Mannheim, Germany, is the bomb for house and techno music. This is amazing, thanks for sharing!

By: ovvl

ovvl — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 19:38:03 -0800

cool. it's also good to know that generic~ish 80's pop music is not quite yet a lost art-form.

By: Conrad-Casserole

Conrad-Casserole — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 20:46:26 -0800

Oh my god this is incredible. Because its proving so great, I'm stuck in West Bengal and am afraid of what the main part of the subcontinent will do to my spare time with its dense clusters of stations. I have really high hopes for the whole of Africa. Especially the western parts.

By: AFABulous

AFABulous — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 21:36:12 -0800

btw the site worked just fine on Chrome on my iPhone 6s and I was able to stream it through bluetooth. I didn't try Safari or anything else. There's no official app, unfortunately.

By: zompist

zompist — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 22:39:44 -0800

This is a fantastic interface. It's like Euro Truck Simulator 2 without the trucks!

By: ZaphodB

ZaphodB — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 23:09:05 -0800

I was just about to mention Euro Truck Simulator 2, because that's exactly what this reminds me of. One of my favorite ways to unwind at the end of a long day is to start ETS2, take the longest delivery run available - Sheffield to Sicily, that kind of thing - and fire up ETS2 Local Radio. As you travel, the program syncs up your in-game radio with a real-world station from whatever your game location is. Driving along rural French roads and listening to the morning news from Marseille is satisfying in ways I can't describe; it's amazing how much immersion can be accomplished through something as simple as a low-fi webcast. This website scratches a similar itch. It's so fun to pick a bright green spot and listen in on a whole other world.

By: halfbuckaroo

halfbuckaroo — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 15:49:45 -0800

No joke, it dropped me on a country station in Hutchinson, KS, playing "Last Christmas," by Wham. Dammit.

By: eye of newt

eye of newt — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 21:06:57 -0800

I love this! Now when I search for some background music, I look for a cool sounding radio station in some forgotten far corner of the world. And there are endless numbers of them, and they are all playing amazing music I've never heard before. A great way to expand your mind, increase your global awareness, and hear some great music all at the same time.

By: cyndigo

cyndigo — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 16:26:16 -0800

I am distress, as every spin takes me to http://radio.garden/live/kiowa-co/coyotecountry983/ which a: is unavailable and b: is only about 50 miles from me. How to re-spin? (Going back to the original URL just spins me to Kiowa.)

By: AFABulous

AFABulous — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 18:10:11 -0800

Tunisian EDM is my new jam. Arabic somehow lends itself to auto tune. More generally, I like having background music in a different language because it's less distracting.

By: AFABulous

AFABulous — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 18:13:41 -0800

cyndigo - can you not just spin it yourself with a mouse or your finger? Or are you expecting it to pick somewhere completely random each time you open the site? I'm in Milwaukee and every time I open the site it's a different station but nothing too far away (Kansas, Illinois, etc). If I want to randomize it I just close my eyes and spin with my finger. When I lift my finger it usually snaps to the closest station (if it's not in an ocean).