Show HN: Campus FM – live stream college and independent radio stations(campus-fm.com)
campus-fm.com
Show HN: Campus FM – live stream college and independent radio stations
https://www.campus-fm.com/
77 comments
Totally! I made this because I used to spend a ton of time at my college radio station, and whenever I would visit other colleges, I made sure to check out their student radio if they had one. The programming is always so unique and offbeat, probably because it's mostly just students DJing for fun.
It's been a blast building this—I've been able to spend a ton of time listening to college radio, and also sharpen my front end skills. Looking for jobs/contracts now if anyone is hiring :)
It's been a blast building this—I've been able to spend a ton of time listening to college radio, and also sharpen my front end skills. Looking for jobs/contracts now if anyone is hiring :)
This is awesome! I love all the logos. A few more if you want to add -
WUSB https://www.wusb.fm/
WSOU https://www.wsou.net/
WNYU https://wnyu.org/
WKCR https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/
WUSB https://www.wusb.fm/
WSOU https://www.wsou.net/
WNYU https://wnyu.org/
WKCR https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/
Also see: https://radio.garden
It would be nice if the song titles history was listed so it is possible to figure out what song you just listened to. See Soma.fm for an example. Might be difficult if that info is not available digitally (though maybe you could use Shazam or something similar to identify them.)
One of the nice things mit radio does is the “track blaster” sub site that lists the playlists of the various shows.
https://track-blaster.com/wmbr/index.php
They archive shows for a week or so and provide a link to listen.
Eg
https://track-blaster.com/wmbr/playlist.php?id=47787
https://track-blaster.com/wmbr/index.php
They archive shows for a week or so and provide a link to listen.
Eg
https://track-blaster.com/wmbr/playlist.php?id=47787
Works great, however the speed at which it can switch from one radio to another suggest they may be receiving all streams while playing just the selected one. That would translate in a lot more bandwidth used. If that's the case, better check your network usage if you are on mobile or on a metered plan.
CMFU is the college station for my alma-mater, McMaster University in Hamilton, ON. I'm sure they'd love to be featured, it's the third oldest community station in Canada.
https://cfmu.ca/
I love listening to these stations, you always get such a great variety of music you probably wouldn't hear much of otherwise. It seems no amount of Spotify AI will rival the taste-making discoverability power of a college hipster behind a DJ set :)
I love listening to these stations, you always get such a great variety of music you probably wouldn't hear much of otherwise. It seems no amount of Spotify AI will rival the taste-making discoverability power of a college hipster behind a DJ set :)
Added! And totally agreed, one of my favorite things is listening to the little music snob talk sets that the DJs do between songs.
Love this.
Curious how you chose the default 8 stations? This is obviously super nitpicky but WERS deserves the Boston spot over WHRB IMO. Yeah, Emerson isn't exactly a powerhouse school, but their radio station is a legitimate player in a major radio market in a way that most college radio stations (Harvard's included) aren't. Definitely more important in Boston than WHRB is.
That aside, I'll two stations to your list: my former home station, WRBB, in lovely Boston, Massachusetts, and WMBR across the river in Cambridge.
Curious how you chose the default 8 stations? This is obviously super nitpicky but WERS deserves the Boston spot over WHRB IMO. Yeah, Emerson isn't exactly a powerhouse school, but their radio station is a legitimate player in a major radio market in a way that most college radio stations (Harvard's included) aren't. Definitely more important in Boston than WHRB is.
That aside, I'll two stations to your list: my former home station, WRBB, in lovely Boston, Massachusetts, and WMBR across the river in Cambridge.
WERS is easily my favorite station in the area; and over the past year it's given me The Beths, Lake Street Dive, and Wet Leg. Absolutely worth a listen.
Boston really is a city of riches in terms of college radio, and each one has its own appeal.
WERS has professional-level radio production, solid music that has broad appeal without being "mainstream". Emerson is one of the few schools I know of where some people will go to the school specifically for the radio station. It's why they have such a large, consistent listnership.
WMBR's DJs are fantastic. The station itself definitely has a more college feel but it's still very well-produced and the station itself seems to be really good at playing obscure tunes, especially in the psych/garage/punk/shoegaze realm. There's a distinct sort of sound I expect with them that almost reminds me of WFMU where I grew up, which is high praise.
WHRB tends to favor classical and jazz more than the other schools' stations because they dedicate large blocs of time to those genres
And then there's my WRBB. We sometimes had some gaps in production (depending on who was DJing) but it's still a great listen since there tends to be a wider range of tunes that come through the station. It also helped that many of our DJs were stalwarts of the local DIY music scene, so we gave airtime to a lot of small local artists that might not have a ton of promotion otherwise.
Personally, I'll always have a soft spot for WRBB owing to my time there but really you can't go wrong with any of these.
WERS has professional-level radio production, solid music that has broad appeal without being "mainstream". Emerson is one of the few schools I know of where some people will go to the school specifically for the radio station. It's why they have such a large, consistent listnership.
WMBR's DJs are fantastic. The station itself definitely has a more college feel but it's still very well-produced and the station itself seems to be really good at playing obscure tunes, especially in the psych/garage/punk/shoegaze realm. There's a distinct sort of sound I expect with them that almost reminds me of WFMU where I grew up, which is high praise.
WHRB tends to favor classical and jazz more than the other schools' stations because they dedicate large blocs of time to those genres
And then there's my WRBB. We sometimes had some gaps in production (depending on who was DJing) but it's still a great listen since there tends to be a wider range of tunes that come through the station. It also helped that many of our DJs were stalwarts of the local DIY music scene, so we gave airtime to a lot of small local artists that might not have a ton of promotion otherwise.
Personally, I'll always have a soft spot for WRBB owing to my time there but really you can't go wrong with any of these.
First four-ish were my favorites when I was building this, and the rest were pretty arbitrary (though I favored streams that were more reliable on more platforms). I actually like WERS better than WHRB; will switch them on the next push :)
I was pleasantly surprised to see KUNM on the list!
had a show on WRBB back in the day too! what a great experience :)
A great idea.
If you're ever in a strange city in a rental car, and want to find a radio station: look between 88 and 92 on the FM dial. That range is reserved for non-profit stations, like these.
You'll also find the local NPR station(s) down there, if there are any.
If you're ever in a strange city in a rental car, and want to find a radio station: look between 88 and 92 on the FM dial. That range is reserved for non-profit stations, like these.
You'll also find the local NPR station(s) down there, if there are any.
It caches the streams in background so the station changes are instantaneous, no need to wait for buffering. I've been toying with this idea for some time, but never really followed through. It's lovely to see it implemented by someone.
Great Project! I think the UI ist really well made for what it aims to do.
And I think something to help independent radio is always a great thing.
As some here in the forum I did shows back then on ("independent") stations, love the medium and think there is (too less heard) creativity out there.
..that's also why I built something similar. But with the focus on the shows(!) https://radiobird.fm
Just a german version right now and mostly european stations but with a plan to change that.
As some here in the forum I did shows back then on ("independent") stations, love the medium and think there is (too less heard) creativity out there.
..that's also why I built something similar. But with the focus on the shows(!) https://radiobird.fm
Just a german version right now and mostly european stations but with a plan to change that.
I'm looking for the inverse. I want an AM/FM tuner that I can stream audio from. It used to be I lived in a place without enough internet connectivity for streaming. Even still, AM/FM radio broadcast still worked. *If only there was a radio tuner that I could attach to a raspberry pi, then stream the audio from it. Bonus points if it lets me record live broadcasts.
* A non-janky solution, like something actually designed for audio.
* A non-janky solution, like something actually designed for audio.
Sorry if I'm missing something, but aren't you asking for literally a radio?
If you want to record, use the 3.5mm "aux" output or RCA outputs and send the audio to a DAW in your computer. Or record to cassette tape like in the old days.
If you want a programmable radio that's otherwise attached to a computer, it seems like this is not hard to DIY with GNU Radio.
If you want to record, use the 3.5mm "aux" output or RCA outputs and send the audio to a DAW in your computer. Or record to cassette tape like in the old days.
If you want a programmable radio that's otherwise attached to a computer, it seems like this is not hard to DIY with GNU Radio.
You could attach an rtl-sdr to a raspberry pi and locally host a websdr server (https://github.com/jketterl/openwebrx is a good open source one). The rtl-sdr doesn't have a high enough sample rate to cover about half of the commercial fm broadcast spectrum at a time where you can see quickly switch between stations in that portion e.g. 89-94 Mhz. Going to the other half just requires having two different modes and switching between them in the websdr interface.
Or just having two sdr's.
It's possible to solder a wire to a GPIO pin of a Raspberry Pi and use a program to broadcast FM from that. I've done this very thing in the past. I did it with a first gen RPi, but I think the actual code to make this work with other RPi models may have changed. Google is your friend for this.
For me the performance was quite good. I could pick up the music anywhere within ~100 ft from a short 6cm wire soldered to a GPIO pin.
For me the performance was quite good. I could pick up the music anywhere within ~100 ft from a short 6cm wire soldered to a GPIO pin.
Very cool! Another addition request. Could you add WTHS, the voice of Hope College?
https://wths.hope.edu/
https://s3.radio.co/scf79220ed/listen
https://tunein.com/radio/WTHS-899-s23126/
https://wths.hope.edu/
https://s3.radio.co/scf79220ed/listen
https://tunein.com/radio/WTHS-899-s23126/
Added :)
Very cool! I listen to WMSE (Wisconsin - Milwaukee School of Engineering - https://www.wmse.org/) and WSUW (UWisconsin Whitewater - https://917theedge.weebly.com/) pretty regularly. It'd be great to see those added, and enjoying finding some new ones with this!
Added WMSE and WSUW :)
This is awesome. Brings back a lot of memories. Love how fast the streams switch.
Can you add WBGU-FM out of Bowling Green, Ohio?
Can you add WBGU-FM out of Bowling Green, Ohio?
Really great work! It might also be cool to have a config that allows for non-cached streams; that way it would allow for "browsing" any of the available streams, rather than limiting to 10 pre-selected ones. I found that restriction to be a bit non-intuitive.
Yep, getting a bunch of comments about the station selection UI (also I can tell from the engagement stats that not a ton of people are successfully swapping out stations). I'm gonna think about how to make this more intuitive in the coming days. Thanks for the feedback!
I wasn’t sure how to get back to the listen to this station page from the “these are the stations I want the option of listening to page”
Took me a bit to figure out clear all would remove them, tapping green meant selected, grey meant not selected, and “Reload new” was like “save new selection”
Instructions for tapping to select/unselect and “save new selection” instead of “reload new” for button label might help
Took me a bit to figure out clear all would remove them, tapping green meant selected, grey meant not selected, and “Reload new” was like “save new selection”
Instructions for tapping to select/unselect and “save new selection” instead of “reload new” for button label might help
https://www.radio-browser.info/
Search 'university' or click 'Geomap'
Search 'university' or click 'Geomap'
A UK (Scottish) one - http://uwsradio.co.uk/ - University of the West of Scotland
Broadcasts online and in FM/DAB in the Ayrshire region of Scotland
Broadcasts online and in FM/DAB in the Ayrshire region of Scotland
My UK university was broadcasting it's Radio station online in 2000, and presumably before, it was a desktop (tower) linux PC taking the studio output and running (IIRC) Icecast off a massive 10M internet connection from the University IT department.
More impressive to me was the FM license, which allowed people to pick up the station within about a mile of the campus.
I think there's still something to be said for the effort which goes into proper radio station - the scheduling, actually turning up to broadcast the (live) programs at a specific time, phone ins, news segments, etc, and the organisational skills to get 50 or so people working together on a single project.
More impressive to me was the FM license, which allowed people to pick up the station within about a mile of the campus.
I think there's still something to be said for the effort which goes into proper radio station - the scheduling, actually turning up to broadcast the (live) programs at a specific time, phone ins, news segments, etc, and the organisational skills to get 50 or so people working together on a single project.
Added! Though it looks like their streaming link caps the # of listeners at a pretty low number, so it might not load every time.
College radio is so much better than commercial radio! Def check out my favorite local college station 88.5 XPN from UPenn. It’s been the best station in my region for as long as I can remember.
Great work! Super fast and smooth interface. Curious how you built it!
I also suggest adding WGBH Boston - 89.7 MHz https://www.wgbh.org/Radio
I also suggest adding WGBH Boston - 89.7 MHz https://www.wgbh.org/Radio
Not sure WFMU really counts as college radio any more (used to be associated with Upsala college) but it’s free-form, listener-supported radio that is very influential in the NYC area.
Anyway, add it or don’t, but give it a listen!
Anyway, add it or don’t, but give it a listen!
Haha just saw Upsala has been gone for a couple decades, but I suppose it's fine as long as there's a college I can associate it with. Added to the app :)
I use Audials for internet radio. Audials has many, if not all, of these stations listed, it has mobile apps, and can cast to Chromecast devices.
Similarly, there is Shortwave for Gnome users. It pulls its list of stations from www.radio-browser.info.
This is neat. I'm curious where you got the list of stations. I try to keep a list of them, as most of them accept indie music submissions.
I started with like 10 stations and then added them as people requested them. Got a ton of requests when I posted this on Reddit a while ago. Lmk if there are any stations you'd like to see on here!
Nice :) Long live radio! Check out https://latenight.fm/
This is awesome, feels super snappy. I miss living in a place with good indie radio, this is hitting the spot.
Cool cool site!
If you are looking for more. - Chicago jazz - College of DuPage, in Glen Ellyn, Il wdcb.org
If you are looking for more. - Chicago jazz - College of DuPage, in Glen Ellyn, Il wdcb.org
WTUL's antenna is still down, so this could be useful for the NOLA area too.
Nice. I like the suggestion form methodology.
Where are the European university stations?
There are hardly any
Not true. Just randomly one I found: https://www.unicross.uni-freiburg.de/unifm-884/
They just need to be indexed like the American ones. I am pretty sure there are Canadian ones (and from other countries) as well.
They just need to be indexed like the American ones. I am pretty sure there are Canadian ones (and from other countries) as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Student_radio_in_th...
Incomplete list of just U.K. ones
Incomplete list of just U.K. ones
A little lost on the interface on iPad.
There is no search button. When I select Add (+), I can search, but when I select from the search results, nothing plays - it seems to add it to some list, but any controls to actually make it play are either off screen or... something.
I’d like to be able to just search & play. The background loading of multiple streams is only useful if switching a lot, but on mobile it is a bandwidth-buster.
There is no search button. When I select Add (+), I can search, but when I select from the search results, nothing plays - it seems to add it to some list, but any controls to actually make it play are either off screen or... something.
I’d like to be able to just search & play. The background loading of multiple streams is only useful if switching a lot, but on mobile it is a bandwidth-buster.
Sounds like I need to work on the UI for switching stations!
The search results let you add new stations to a queue, but they're not playable until you press "Reload Stations" on the modal—which isn't obvious or intuitive. At the very least I can add some instructions for loading new stations.
I've also explored adding a drag and drop interface, but that's a little trickier than search (technically and design-wise). Will need to think more about it. Thanks for the feedback!
The search results let you add new stations to a queue, but they're not playable until you press "Reload Stations" on the modal—which isn't obvious or intuitive. At the very least I can add some instructions for loading new stations.
I've also explored adding a drag and drop interface, but that's a little trickier than search (technically and design-wise). Will need to think more about it. Thanks for the feedback!
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Add a map!
UCLA Radio - uclaradio.com
Really snappy! Well done.
nit: should've clarified it's US stations only
It has University of Cologne and a bunch of Canadian stations! Are there any other international college stations you'd like to see on it? I've mostly been adding stations from user requests, and most of them have been in the US.
Please add the one from the UniFreiburg. https://www.unicross.uni-freiburg.de/unifm-884/
i was thinking european stations (can think of a few from my home country, portugal)
If you send me some callsigns for Portuguese college stations, I would be happy to add them :)
hmm not really familiar with callsigns to be honest. i do have a list of streams:
- RUA - Rádio Universitária do Algarve: https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/536?mp=/stream (https://rua.pt/)
- Universidade FM (Vila Real): https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/405?mp=/stream (https://www.universidade.fm/)
- UAL - Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa: https://spaudio.servers.pt/8006/stream (https://ualmedia.pt/radio-autonoma/)
- FEUP - Engenharia Rádio: http://193.136.38.145:8080/live?type=.mp3 (www.engenhariaradio.pt)
- RUM - Rádio Universitária do Minho: https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/558?mp=/stream (https://www.rum.pt/)
- RUC - Rádio Universidade de Coimbra: https://stream.ruc.pt/high (https://www.ruc.pt/)
- RUA - Rádio Universitária do Algarve: https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/536?mp=/stream (https://rua.pt/)
- Universidade FM (Vila Real): https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/405?mp=/stream (https://www.universidade.fm/)
- UAL - Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa: https://spaudio.servers.pt/8006/stream (https://ualmedia.pt/radio-autonoma/)
- FEUP - Engenharia Rádio: http://193.136.38.145:8080/live?type=.mp3 (www.engenhariaradio.pt)
- RUM - Rádio Universitária do Minho: https://centova.radio.com.pt/proxy/558?mp=/stream (https://www.rum.pt/)
- RUC - Rádio Universidade de Coimbra: https://stream.ruc.pt/high (https://www.ruc.pt/)
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Radio is interesting because there is a required structure (mandated by the FCC) that is fairly strict, but leaves plenty of room for creativity and freedom. Great way to learn how to work within constraints and get the most out of something.
If any college students are reading this, consider joining your school's radio station. It was a great way to meet people and learn.