I still sit at my desk and listen to the radio like a total weirdo. Yes, I know streaming apps exist—I use Spotify every day, too. Spotify is great for listening to entire albums or even the occasional playlist. Where the service frustrates me, however, is when it tries to use my listening history to recommend more music. The worst version is Spotify's autoplay feature, which automatically plays something else at the end of whatever you're listening to.
This may be my fault. A lot of people seem to really like this algorithm. Maybe I'm using Spotify "wrong", or at least differently than the average user. But apparently every time I listen to an entire album, Spotify's algorithm suddenly decides that I'm obsessed with that artist and what I've always wanted to listen to - even if I only listened to an album once. In other words, it often leads me down rabbit holes.
Rabbit holes can be fun, but I don’t want to stay in them. Sometimes when I listen to music I prefer to hear a mix of cultural trends mixed with a bunch of old songs that I already like but haven't listened to in years. Sometimes I want to listen to some weird music that I've never looked for and the algorithm would never recommend to me. Yes, I like my music to be interrupted occasionally by a real person telling a corny joke or news commentary.
Sometimes, it turns out, I want a radio.
Algorithms are a trap
The theory behind using algorithms to recommend music makes sense in the abstract: you like artist A, and artist B is similar, so you might also like artist B. But in practice, the result is that I end up listening to a lot of music in the same key, so to speak.
Last fall, I listened to Boygenius' The Record at least once a day. Spotify caught on to this and recommended similar low-key indie rock to me, which I passively listened to. Apparently, the algorithm concluded that I was a 20-something art school dropout. If this sounds specific, it is:
Some people - those obsessed with things like "facts" and "reality" - would classify me as a man in his thirties. Even so, I'm not necessarily opposed to it. A small part of me clearly resonates with the sad independent girl. But sad girl indie music is what Spotify has recommended to me for months , and it accounts for the majority of what it autoplays on my behalf. Any playlist labeled "Created for Me" tends to contain the same three or so songs at the top, and DJ mode tends to fall into the same trap.
But I'm not just a sad girl. I am a person with different musical tastes and I want to keep exploring and expanding my horizons. I don’t listen to music because I want to fall into complacency by always listening to the same stuff. I want to be surprised, to be exposed to weird and wonderful things I've never looked for, and an algorithm trained on my listening habits might not nudge me in that way.
For me, the best way to find this is with the help of other people. A good disc jockey can provide me with a more eclectic (and maybe even challenging) playlist instead of the same vibe for hours.
How to find the radio station that's right for you
Now, the easiest thing you can do to find a radio station is dig out a real physical FM radio and see what's on the dial. Now, depending on where you live, channels that aren't monopolized by the same company owner may be limited, and I bet most people don't have FM radios in their homes, so you could start online if that's easier. I spent some time looking for online radio stations that I liked, as well as human-curated playlists. I even wrote a guide to finding them a few years ago.
I recommend finding some local stations, preferably community-run ones, that don't interrupt the music with ads. I live in Oregon and I love the Portland Radio Project and Shady Pines Radio, both of which are very eclectic but still have some great stations broadcasting around the world. NTS Radio is deliberately all over the map, Radio Paradise goes to some unusual places and still plays some songs you may be familiar with. There's also SomaFM, which offers a range of different stations under one umbrella.
These are just my personal favorite stations. Part of the fun of escaping the algorithm is finding your favorites, adjusting and discovering what you like and don't like.
Best Apps for Online Broadcasting
There's nothing wrong with listening to the radio in a web browser—in some ways, it's easier. But I prefer having an app for the job as it makes it easier to pause or change stations on the fly.
I use Eter to listen to radio on my Mac. You can use it to search for a specific station or discover new stations. You can also add stations yourself (assuming they don't show up in searches), and there's a matching iPhone app that syncs your preferred station list.
On Android, I like RadioDroid. It has a comprehensive radio station database and a nice user interface. It's also open source and ad-free.
If Spotify was smart, it would add radio stations
Spotify has been on a mission to dominate the audio space. That's why it's spent so much money trying to take over the podcast business, and why it's currently promoting audiobooks so heavily. Another obvious way to have more control over my audio life is to play actual radio stations simultaneously.
Apple Music is great for radio, especially if you have a subscription. There are even some Apple-exclusive runs programmed by actual DJs, and with TuneIn integration you can also search for almost any station on the planet and find it there. I don't know why Spotify hasn't copied this feature. Until then, I'll avoid the algorithm by looking elsewhere.
