Lo-fi Beanie

Description

Soft knit beanie. Headphone friendly. The chat is moderated by humans, which keeps it friendly, weird and welcoming. Some weeks the playlist is meticulously planned; other weeks it is a group chat argument that somehow turns into a show.

Behind the scenes

When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit. We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one.

Every show on ArrayFM starts with a simple rule: play the track you would send to a friend at 2am. Nothing beats the feeling of a track dropping at exactly the right moment and the chat exploding with fire emojis. Our engineers obsess over latency because a stream that stutters is a stream people switch off. Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts.

• Community playlist every Sunday
• Low-data mode for mobile
• Podcast feed updated nightly
• Stream in 128 kbps MP3 or 320 kbps AAC

We record every show, trim the talk, and publish it as a podcast by the next morning. We keep a strict no-autoplay policy on the site: you press play, and then we never interrupt you. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it. The mixing desk is older than some of our interns, and it still sounds better than anything new.

From the request line

We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link. 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. Every Friday we look at the numbers, and every Friday the numbers say people want more synthwave. Our community Discord is where most show ideas start and where most bad puns go to live forever.

We keep the stream running around the clock, which means someone is always awake, caffeinated and slightly too excited about a B-side. Some weeks the playlist is meticulously planned; other weeks it is a group chat argument that somehow turns into a show. Our engineers obsess over latency because a stream that stutters is a stream people switch off.

A station is only as good as its worst transition.

We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery. Listeners tell us they tune in while they code, study, drive, cook and occasionally while they should be sleeping. The request line gets more messages than ever, and our DJs read every single one on air.

How to tune in

Nothing beats the feeling of a track dropping at exactly the right moment and the chat exploding with fire emojis. Our community Discord is where most show ideas start and where most bad puns go to live forever. A radio station is really a promise: that there will be something good playing whenever you tune in. Guests are always surprised by how relaxed the studio is, until the ON AIR light turns red.

The station started as a side project in a spare room and a borrowed microphone. We keep a strict no-autoplay policy on the site: you press play, and then we never interrupt you. We record every show, trim the talk, and publish it as a podcast by the next morning. We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes.

The short version

Local artists make up almost a third of what we play, and that number keeps going up. We keep the stream running around the clock, which means someone is always awake, caffeinated and slightly too excited about a B-side. Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break. We keep a strict no-autoplay policy on the site: you press play, and then we never interrupt you. We test new segments live, keep what works and quietly retire what does not.

We keep the stream running around the clock, which means someone is always awake, caffeinated and slightly too excited about a B-side. Late nights are for experiments: long mixes, ambient sets and the occasional field recording. If you have ever wondered why a song sounds warmer on air, the answer is a ridiculous amount of compression. Our schedule is built in blocks, with softer sounds in the morning and heavier beats after dark.