Recently, a math-minded friend and I were discussing the concept of infinity and how it exists to varying degrees. Attempting to grasp the concept, I compared it to opening up Spotify and being greeted with bottomless choices; the music specially tailored for me is ostensibly infinite, but perhaps less infinite than a playlist called “Chill Vibes.”
Today’s music platforms attempt to solve the existential dread of decision-making with algorithms that sort through infinity to serve you exactly what you want, ad infinitum. But the anxiety of too much choice persists, with listening experiences feeling more contrived each day. It might explain the renewed popularity of online radio, which offers a human-driven reprieve from the algorithm, and has yet to be fully folded into the status quo of the major platforms. (Both Apple and Spotify have radio tools, but these efforts are at the benefit—and restraint—of the platform.) Independently run stations like London’s NTS Radio, The Lot Radio and Newtown Radio in New York, Amsterdam’s Red Light Radio, Cashmere Radio in Berlin, and a number of others have carved out a niche that, in some ways, feels like man’s last stand against the machine.
Every morning at 6 a.m., the smart speaker in my bedroom is set to play a stream from NTS, just as Charlie Bones’ “The Do!! You!! Breakfast Show” is getting underway. On the daily program, the British record-store proprietor plays an esoteric blend of 1980s pop, new wave, jazz, and more; a show a few weeks back segued from the Nigerian pop artist King Sunny Adé to the Italian composer Lucio Battisti. Within most streaming apps there are hundreds of pre-made morning playlists, full of upbeat songs to get you hyped for the day, but the unpredictability of Bones’ program is eminently more satisfying.
On a recent weekday morning, I was awakened by Bones—who speaks with a dry, brutally honest wit—taking phone requests. He instructed callers to sing the song they were requesting. A caller from Tel Aviv sang him the 1982 song “Sports Men” by the Japanese experimentalist Haruomi Hosono. A post-doctoral researcher working in Cambridge called in and sang the disco-era classic “You Got the Floor” by Arthur Adams. There was a call from a delivery man who had an order outside the station. He didn’t sing anything.
The spontaneity of online radio feels like an essential rejection of today’s automated environment, but it’s part of a long history of independent distribution. In Britain, pirate radio became an essential part of youth culture starting in the 1960s, playing genres like rock and pop, which the official BBC stations refused to do. In the 1990s and 2000s, stations like Rinse FM would help facilitate the rise of dance and electronic music, as well as grime and dubstep. In America, college radio stations put forth a similar independent spirit, connecting networks of underground scenes away from major cities. As the internet became mainstream, and the technology for streaming audio improved, niche broadcasters started building out their own communities online. Radio Garden, which maps web streams around the globe, currently counts the number of online stations at around 8,000. These internet-based outposts have more in common with the peer-to-peer sensibility of Napster than the commercialized sheen of big streaming sites. You surrender yourself to an element of chance by tuning in.
Airtime, open-source audio streaming software developed by Sourcefabric, serves as the backbone for many of today’s popular online stations. It allows music enthusiasts around the world to run their own stations remotely. The core group of administrators at Kansas City’s Terry Radio—who refer to themselves as “Terrys”—operate almost exclusively from dispersed locations using Airtime. Assembling via Google Hangouts, the Terry Radio team tell me their station feels more like a community than a streaming site. Grant Sunderland, one of the station’s founders who now lives in L.A., describes it as “a DIY venue on the internet.” Ulla Straus, a Chicago-based musician who serves as one of the station’s administrators, sees Terry as a beacon for those who prefer niche sounds but might be intimidated by a local scene. “It gives people an opportunity to experiment with music, or even learn how to DJ,” she says.
Terry Radio plays a wide swath of underground music, from Eastern European rap to experimental techno from the American Midwest. As with most online stations, there is a chatroom that accompanies broadcasts, where DJs are known to talk with listeners. The audience is small but dedicated. Running on just a few servers, the Terry operation sits in contrast to some of online radio’s more established players.
In 2015, The Guardian reported that NTS Radio received a quarter-million monthly listeners. The company, which was started in 2011 by Femi Adeyemi, has also grown into a broader type of media enterprise, launching a number of partnerships with brands and media companies. (There was last year’s collaboration with Dazed and Carhartt for a documentary about roller disco in Detroit, for example.) Rather than compete with the enormous revenue that streaming generates, these online stations find their own ways to make it work. The Lot Radio is also a Brooklyn coffee shop that serves beer and wine. In December, the station hosted a pop-up in Times Square in partnership with Time Square Arts, bringing underground DJs to New York's most famous tourist attraction. Cutting out the middleman, Red Bull got into the online radio business years ago as part of its branding efforts, hosting a slate of programming from independent musicians and DJs on Red Bull Radio.
Keeping independent stations running remains a challenge: Berlin Community Radio, a stalwart in the underground radio world, will cease broadcasts in February, after five years on the air. BCR’s founders Anastazja Moser and Sarah Miles posted a statement on the station’s page saying, “We reached a dead end and spirits have fallen low after losing all funding in 2018. We realize for many this comes as a shock and surprise but unfortunately as it is, BCR is not a sustainable model.”
And yet, there appears to be an infinite amount of enthusiasm for online radio and the potential it represents for listeners. Brooklyn-based Half Moon Radio, which launched in August, sees itself as a way for black and brown New Yorkers to reconnect with dance music genres that have their roots in those communities but are more likely to be considered “white people music” today. “We use this platform as a way to show black people that there are other black people that like this music,” Surf, the station’s founder, tells me over the phone. “I feel like people are gonna start to miss the old school way of radio, of musical discovery, and they’re gonna start opening stations like ours.”
The pressure of capitalism has made most independent creative endeavors uniquely challenging: How do you offer a space for experimentation without thinking of profit? The low barrier to entry for online radio offers a useful salve. It’s reminiscent of the dream of an open web, one that functions as a tool for human connection instead of a tool for data collection. As streaming platforms continue to redefine the music industry, it’s independently run online stations that present a real potential for an alternative.
Online radio offers a useful reminder that nothing has to be the way it is. Much of the conversation around the future of music has taken as a given that streaming will determine what we all listen to. But perhaps the solution to the terror of too much choice is ignoring the machine and opting instead to listen to each other.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that The Lot's Times Square pop-up was a collaboration with TSX Broadway; it was in partnership with Times Square Arts.
