Synth State Vinyl

Description

Limited 12" pressing of our favourite synthwave cuts. Some of our most-loved segments started as a joke in the green room. We measure success in hours listened, not clicks, which keeps us honest about what actually matters.

The tech stack

Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. We keep a strict no-autoplay policy on the site: you press play, and then we never interrupt you. The request line gets more messages than ever, and our DJs read every single one on air.

When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour. Our community Discord is where most show ideas start and where most bad puns go to live forever. Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. The chat is moderated by humans, which keeps it friendly, weird and welcoming. We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link.

• Low-data mode for mobile
• Community playlist every Sunday
• Keyboard-friendly player controls
• Weekend throwbacks from 08:00

We run on a tiny budget, a lot of goodwill and a very generous hosting sponsor. Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. The best feedback we ever got was a single line: “you made my deploy go faster”. 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.

Behind the scenes

Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. Morning shows are for energy, weather, traffic and the one story everyone at work will talk about. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one.

Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit. We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link.

Play the track you would send to a friend at 2am. That is the whole format.

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 keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery.

The setup

Accessibility matters to us, so every show gets a transcript and every page works with a keyboard. A radio station is really a promise: that there will be something good playing whenever you tune in. The station started as a side project in a spare room and a borrowed microphone. Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break.

Nothing beats the feeling of a track dropping at exactly the right moment and the chat exploding with fire emojis. The request line gets more messages than ever, and our DJs read every single one on air. Morning shows are for energy, weather, traffic and the one story everyone at work will talk about. Listeners tell us they tune in while they code, study, drive, cook and occasionally while they should be sleeping.

The short version

Our engineers obsess over latency because a stream that stutters is a stream people switch off. When a listener sends a track we have never heard, it goes straight into the next hour. Local artists make up almost a third of what we play, and that number keeps going up. A radio station is really a promise: that there will be something good playing whenever you tune in. We run on a tiny budget, a lot of goodwill and a very generous hosting sponsor.

We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery. 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. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit.