We now stream in lossless on the web

Every show on ArrayFM starts with a simple rule: play the track you would send to a friend at 2am. Our favourite metric is the number of listeners who stay through the ad break. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery.

The playlist

Some of our most-loved segments started as a joke in the green room. Accessibility matters to us, so every show gets a transcript and every page works with a keyboard. 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. The mixing desk is older than some of our interns, and it still sounds better than anything new. Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link. We record every show, trim the talk, and publish it as a podcast by the next morning.

• No autoplay, ever
• Late-night mixes with no talking
• Request a song from any page
• Listen on the web, in the app or on a smart speaker

Some weeks the playlist is meticulously planned; other weeks it is a group chat argument that somehow turns into a show. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery. 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. Our schedule is built in blocks, with softer sounds in the morning and heavier beats after dark.

A short history

We measure success in hours listened, not clicks, which keeps us honest about what actually matters. Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. 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.

We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one. The chat is moderated by humans, which keeps it friendly, weird and welcoming. Local artists make up almost a third of what we play, and that number keeps going up. We record every show, trim the talk, and publish it as a podcast by the next morning.

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

Accessibility matters to us, so every show gets a transcript and every page works with a keyboard. Some of our most-loved segments started as a joke in the green room. Our schedule is built in blocks, with softer sounds in the morning and heavier beats after dark.

What we learned

We believe the music should never stop just because you clicked a link. Late nights are for experiments: long mixes, ambient sets and the occasional field recording. The request line gets more messages than ever, and our DJs read every single one on air.

We learned early that a stable stream matters more than a fancy one. Behind the scenes, the playout system is a small pile of open source tools glued together with very careful shell scripts. Some weeks the playlist is meticulously planned; other weeks it is a group chat argument that somehow turns into a show.

The short version

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. Our community Discord is where most show ideas start and where most bad puns go to live forever.

Most of our DJs have day jobs in software, design or support, which explains the jokes. Some of our most-loved segments started as a joke in the green room. Local artists make up almost a third of what we play, and that number keeps going up. Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it.

The setup

We record every show, trim the talk, and publish it as a podcast by the next morning. Morning shows are for energy, weather, traffic and the one story everyone at work will talk about. Our schedule is built in blocks, with softer sounds in the morning and heavier beats after dark. 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. A radio station is really a promise: that there will be something good playing whenever you tune in. We keep the site lightweight on purpose, so it loads fast on a train, a tired laptop or a phone at 5% battery.

The archive now holds more than two thousand hours of shows, all searchable by track and guest. Some of our most-loved segments started as a joke in the green room. 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.

A few thank-yous

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. Good radio sounds effortless, but every minute on air has at least ten minutes of prep behind it. We keep a strict no-autoplay policy on the site: you press play, and then we never interrupt you.

Nothing beats the feeling of a track dropping at exactly the right moment and the chat exploding with fire emojis. We test new segments live, keep what works and quietly retire what does not. The mixing desk is older than some of our interns, and it still sounds better than anything new.

• Transcripts for every talk segment
• Late-night mixes with no talking
• Podcast feed updated nightly
• Stream in 128 kbps MP3 or 320 kbps AAC

Every Friday we look at the numbers, and every Friday the numbers say people want more synthwave. 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. We still print the weekly playlist and pin it on the studio wall, mostly out of habit.