Listen In

[onlyknownothing]

pshaw_raven introduced me to Earth.fm, which is a digital radio service for nature sounds. I love ambient noise for relaxation purposes while doing work-related things, so this is absolutely going to be of use to me. That said, it made me realize that many of the people reading this now may not know of several of the audio-focused sites I return to regularly. I'm sharing them now for your perusal, in case any of these strike a chord with you.

1.) MusicRepublic

Subtitled as "World Traditional Music from LPs and Cassettes," this blog is exactly that. The creator finds recordings of traditional music from around the globe and digitizes them - allowing them to be shared with a world audience. On average a new recording is posted every week.

2.) Radiooooo

Listen to music from across the globe and the timeline, from 1900 to (experimental predictions of) 2070. Includes things ranging from "music played on the Titanic" to disco-era Maltese pop. Subscription unlocks wider fine-tune control in specific playlists, but even without logging in you can find some amazing discoveries.

3.) Monk Parker's Lost World Radio

Operated by the band Monk Parker as a curation of music the musicians personally find interesting and inspiring, Lost World Radio describes itself on its mission statement as: "It's our desire simply to bring various rapidly receding sounds to your notice so that they can be loved as they probably more or less deserve." As befitting the band's own sound, it tends towards down-tempo and contemplative music.

4.) SomaFM

One of the early "web radio" stations, and still operating more-or-less with the same vibe and in the same way. Channels for everything from the DEFCON hacker conference to the San Francisco police radio scanner, with some really well-curated music stations across a variety of genres. They still use the classic M3U file format, so pretty much anything can listen in (though they now have a mobile app as well). Best of all, they're entirely listener-supported and thus commercial-free.

Let me know in the comments if you have any recommendations of your own to share!

Comments

[kossai]

not explicitly for music , but youtube clients that strip away algorithmic features can be nice ways to discover random new music . kossai stumble on things like the fae's spell and whispering woodlands this way - small videos from small channels .

unfortunately at times might have to also sift through compilation channels , but certain clients allow user to block channels from search results , so that can make searches useful again .

[onlyknownothing]

Can you suggest any in particular? I gotta say, YouTube's algorithm is often terrible to me - even with Firefox and uBlock origin, every time I'm interested in some sort of video game it goes "oh, you like video games?" and deduces that I need to be shunted down some right-wing radicalization rabbit-hole. I don't find many new-and-novel things on there as a result, due to having to fight what the system thinks I "should" want to see next. I'd very much appreciate any recommendations for alternative clients as a result.

[kossai]

kossai usually use freetube !

can hide channels from searches permanently , make offline video playlists , separate subscriptions into different folders - and also export backup files of these things ! recommendations come from visible keywords , but can also choose to hide and not have any recommendations . many other choices to remove UI elements and strip down to only what want :)

[onlyknownothing]

Thanks so much! I'm definitely checking this out. 👍