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I have a couple devices that play FM (and AM) radio. I've spent my life listening to one type of radio station (rock/metal), but after accidentally turning my CD player to FM and it playing a hip hop station, I started scrubbing through the radio waves to see what else interesting would come on.
Now to be clear I ain't no expert, I don't entirely understand how radio works, I jus think its neat so this is based off my my experience :) It's a great way to fill background noise instead of scrubbing youtube or spotify for something.
Explore Your Local Radio With Me
Most devices that can play audio probably have an FM ability. If nothin else, you can get a radio app on your phone, but that will be a slightly different experience.
There's two different types of tuners, which is how you select your station; digital and analog. Digital is usually an up and down button that can more precisely seek signals, and likely has a digital display to tell you exactly which frequency your on. Analog is a knob or slider that slides between frequencies with more finesse, featuring a needle or some other physical doohickey sliding between pointing around a dial or scale or sorts to tell you approximately where you are. I mainly have experience with analog tuners, and they definitely feel a little more "retro."
Exploring radio stations is simply a matter of scrubbing up and down the spectrum. You'll get alot of fuzz between stations, and some stations may not come in very clear depending on where they're coming from.
There's fun to be had in just going through and not knowing what you're gonna land on, but there's also the chance of landing on an ad break or an evangelical sermon. If you wanna know exactly whats playing near you, I recommend Radio Locator! Put in your zip and it'll give you all the infos on local stations.
I like to hang out on NPR (National Public Radio) stations when not radio surfing. They are publicly funded like PBS, play a variety of music in my experience, and give a news brief every so often. Stations owned by schools are also likely ad free and publicly funded.
Explore the World of Radio
If you get tired of your local stations, your country killed off FM, or are simply curious about radio in other parts of the world, the future of Digital Radio is Now! Radio apps can certainly take you around the world, and one site I've seen recommended is Radio Garden, which puts you on a physical map of the globe. I haven't messed with it much, but you can travel by genre, country, or "Balloon Ride" to take you to random stations. The link above takes you to "Cashmere Radio" in Berlin, Germany, which is some very experimental, atmospheric electronic music, which is pretty neat!
Surf the FM Waves
Go forth with your power of radio, tell me about your favorite stations and where they are in the comments! But please don't doxx yourself
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✧ tr4sh_r4tty ✧
I love Radio Garden! Been using it for months now since most of local radio stations don't have a lot of cool stuff around here. I miss traveling while listening to the radio, I used to do that a lot in my school years, the city landscape does hit different while listening to FM.
I tend to listen a lot of flashback radios (Alpha FM and another one from Japan, Radio Garden is down so I can't get the link) since they improve my focus a lot while working, maybe because it was the type of music I used to listen when my mom took me to work with her in my childhood.
adelita
sometimes not having everything hyper-curated (like our playlists) breaks up the monotony. I’ve found radio to be a bit like a salve to the always-satiated brain. you may not like every song that plays, but you relinquish control of the journey.
Pory
I love flipping through radio stations! I'm a big radio garden nut; one of my favorites was an online station called Shinsen Radio out of Georgia. It mostly played J-rock and anime OSTs, and they took requests off of their super 2000s website. They went off the air a few years back with little warning or explanation, and now even the website's gone. Radio garden also has radio from North Korea for something interesting and depressing.
I also love pulling up local talk stations from the middle of nowhere in the US and hearing what they have going on. There's a really obvious community bent in more rural areas for some of these stations, and you get news about like parent teacher conferences and local advertising in places really far away.
There's also SOME interesting religious talk stuff you can stumble on. I heard a radio show from like a Catholic exorcist one time and someone called in very shaken and was like "hello there's like scratching in my walls at night, is this demons?" and the exorcist was like "uhh no, doesn't really sound like it... maybe try pest control?" Kinda wish I could remember what station that was because he gently let down a couple of people who probably had pests/mental health issues while still believing 100% in demons.
And obviously AM stations are really neat. FM stations are pretty often commercialized and owned by some larger media group, but AM stations are still obscure. 9 times out of 10 it's religious or political rants, but at least they're doing whatever the fuck they want.
And a few benefits of analogue: sometimes you can pick up on stuff from farther away that's just a little bit fuzzy, and sometimes you can balance it just right and get 2 signals at once!
(oh yes, and local stations sometimes play stuff from local artists that you wouldn't have heard of otherwise! especially college and other nonprofit stations!)
by Pory; ; Report