Marcus Webb has been with ArrayFM since the very first broadcast. Local artists make up almost a third of what we play, and that number keeps going up. The chat is moderated by humans, which keeps it friendly, weird and welcoming.
Questions we keep getting
Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it. Listeners tell us they tune in while they code, study, drive, cook and occasionally while they should be sleeping. Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. Local artists make up almost a third of what we play, and that number keeps going up.
Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link. Our community Discord is where most show ideas start and where most bad puns go to live forever. We keep a strict no-autoplay policy on the site: you press play, and then we never interrupt you.
- New shows every weekday at 06:00
- Late-night mixes with no talking
- Keyboard-friendly player controls
- Stream in 128 kbps MP3 or 320 kbps AAC
Our community Discord is where most show ideas start and where most bad puns go to live forever. Late nights are for experiments: long mixes, ambient sets and the occasional field recording. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit. Our engineers obsess over latency because a stream that stutters is a stream people switch off. Morning shows are for energy, weather, traffic and the one story everyone at work will talk about.
The tech stack
Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it. Guests are always surprised by how relaxed the studio is, until the ON AIR light turns red. Nothing beats the feeling of a track dropping at exactly the right moment and the chat exploding with fire emojis. If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression. The studio is small, the monitors are loud and the coffee machine has its own on-call rotation.
We measure success in hours listened, not clicks, which keeps us honest about what actually matters. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit. We keep the stream running around the clock, which means someone is always awake, caffeinated and slightly too excited about a B-side. The studio is small, the monitors are loud and the coffee machine has its own on-call rotation.
Play the track you would send to a friend at 2am. That is the whole format.
Listeners tell us they tune in while they code, study, drive, cook and occasionally while they should be sleeping. If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit.
How it works
Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break. Every Friday we look at the numbers, and every Friday the numbers say people want more synthwave. We test new segments live, keep what works and quietly retire what does not. The best feedback we ever got was a single line: “you made my deploy go faster”. If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression.
Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour. We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one. Listeners tell us they tune in while they code, study, drive, cook and occasionally while they should be sleeping. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes.
The short version
Listeners tell us they tune in while they code, study, drive, cook and occasionally while they should be sleeping. We run on a tiny budget, a lot of goodwill and a very generous hosting sponsor. If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression. Accessibility matters to us, so every show gets a transcript and every page works with a keyboard.
We run on a tiny budget, a lot of goodwill and a very generous hosting sponsor. Late nights are for experiments: long mixes, ambient sets and the occasional field recording. The station started as a side project in a spare room and a borrowed microphone. If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression.
On air and off
We run on a tiny budget, a lot of goodwill and a very generous hosting sponsor. Local artists make up almost a third of what we play, and that number keeps going up. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery.
The station started as a side project in a spare room and a borrowed microphone. The chat is moderated by humans, which keeps it friendly, weird and welcoming. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery.
Some weeks the playlist is meticulously planned; other weeks it is a group chat argument that somehow turns into a show. A radio station is really a promise: that there will be something good playing whenever you tune in. Accessibility matters to us, so every show gets a transcript and every page works with a keyboard. The station started as a side project in a spare room and a borrowed microphone. Our engineers obsess over latency because a stream that stutters is a stream people switch off.