Aiko Tanaka has been with ArrayFM since the very first broadcast. Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it.
Where to find us
Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. The station started as a side project in a spare room and a borrowed microphone. We keep the stream running around the clock, which means someone is always awake, caffeinated and slightly too excited about a B-side. We record every show, trim the talk, and publish it as a podcast by the next morning.
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. Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break. Accessibility matters to us, so every show gets a transcript and every page works with a keyboard. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes.
- Keyboard-friendly player controls
- Listen on the web, in the app or on a smart speaker
- New shows every weekday at 06:00
- Request a song from any page
Radio has always been about company, and that has not changed just because the transmitter is now a rack of servers. Every Friday we look at the numbers, and every Friday the numbers say people want more synthwave. When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour.
Why we did it
The request line gets more messages than ever, and our DJs read every single one on air. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery. Every Friday we look at the numbers, and every Friday the numbers say people want more synthwave. 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.
The studio is small, the monitors are loud and the coffee machine has its own on-call rotation. We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link. Our schedule is built in blocks, with softer sounds in the morning and heavier beats after dark. The chat is moderated by humans, which keeps it friendly, weird and welcoming.
If the page reloads, the song stops. So the page does not reload.
We measure success in hours listened, not clicks, which keeps us honest about what actually matters. Accessibility matters to us, so every show gets a transcript and every page works with a keyboard. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery. Late nights are for experiments: long mixes, ambient sets and the occasional field recording. We keep a strict no-autoplay policy on the site: you press play, and then we never interrupt you.
The tech stack
Listeners tell us they tune in while they code, study, drive, cook and occasionally while they should be sleeping. Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break. The chat is moderated by humans, which keeps it friendly, weird and welcoming.
Every Friday we look at the numbers, and every Friday the numbers say people want more synthwave. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. A radio station is really a promise: that there will be something good playing whenever you tune in. We test new segments live, keep what works and quietly retire what does not. We run on a tiny budget, a lot of goodwill and a very generous hosting sponsor.
The short version
We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one. When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour. A radio station is really a promise: that there will be something good playing whenever you tune in.
Our schedule is built in blocks, with softer sounds in the morning and heavier beats after dark. Nothing beats the feeling of a track dropping at exactly the right moment and the chat exploding with fire emojis. The best feedback we ever got was a single line: “you made my deploy go faster”. Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break.
Small details
We measure success in hours listened, not clicks, which keeps us honest about what actually matters. We test new segments live, keep what works and quietly retire what does not. We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link. Some of our most-loved segments started as a joke in the green room. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit.
We measure success in hours listened, not clicks, which keeps us honest about what actually matters. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour.
Every show on ArrayFM starts with a simple rule: play the track you would send to a friend at 2am. Every Friday we look at the numbers, and every Friday the numbers say people want more synthwave. Some weeks the playlist is meticulously planned; other weeks it is a group chat argument that somehow turns into a show. The mixing desk is older than some of our interns, and it still sounds better than anything new.