Our first listener meetup was a blast

Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit. A radio station is really a promise: that there will be something good playing whenever you tune in.

Behind the scenes

Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. The request line gets more messages than ever, and our DJs read every single one on air. The station started as a side project in a spare room and a borrowed microphone. When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour.

If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression. Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it. Every show on ArrayFM starts with a simple rule: play the track you would send to a friend at 2am.

• New shows every weekday at 06:00
• Keyboard-friendly player controls
• Request a song from any page
• Chat moderated by real people

Some of our most-loved segments started as a joke in the green room. Our community Discord is where most show ideas start and where most bad puns go to live forever. If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression.

The long version

The best feedback we ever got was a single line: “you made my deploy go faster”. Our engineers obsess over latency because a stream that stutters is a stream people switch off. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes.

Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break. We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link. We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one. 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.

A station is only as good as its worst transition.

Radio has always been about company, and that has not changed just because the transmitter is now a rack of servers. 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.

How it works

We test new segments live, keep what works and quietly retire what does not. We measure success in hours listened, not clicks, which keeps us honest about what actually matters. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. The archive now holds more than two thousand hours of shows, all searchable by track and guest.

If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression. 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. A good transition is invisible: you only notice it when it goes wrong, like a page that flashes white between clicks. The request line gets more messages than ever, and our DJs read every single one on air.

The short version

We test new segments live, keep what works and quietly retire what does not. Our community Discord is where most show ideas start and where most bad puns go to live forever. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit. 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. Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it. 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. The archive now holds more than two thousand hours of shows, all searchable by track and guest.

On air and off

Some of our most-loved segments started as a joke in the green room. The studio is small, the monitors are loud and the coffee machine has its own on-call rotation. We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one. We keep the stream running around the clock, which means someone is always awake, caffeinated and slightly too excited about a B-side. The station started as a side project in a spare room and a borrowed microphone.

Every show on ArrayFM starts with a simple rule: play the track you would send to a friend at 2am. If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression. Morning shows are for energy, weather, traffic and the one story everyone at work will talk about.

A good transition is invisible: you only notice it when it goes wrong, like a page that flashes white between clicks. The chat is moderated by humans, which keeps it friendly, weird and welcoming. Our engineers obsess over latency because a stream that stutters is a stream people switch off. We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one. Radio has always been about company, and that has not changed just because the transmitter is now a rack of servers.

The playlist

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. When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour. 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. Some weeks the playlist is meticulously planned; other weeks it is a group chat argument that somehow turns into a show. The studio is small, the monitors are loud and the coffee machine has its own on-call rotation.

• Low-data mode for mobile
• Chat moderated by real people
• Keyboard-friendly player controls
• No autoplay, ever

The mixing desk is older than some of our interns, and it still sounds better than anything new. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery. 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. Our engineers obsess over latency because a stream that stutters is a stream people switch off.