Day 24: Today's Pick — An Indie Internet Radio Station I've Been Leaving On

I have been searching for the spiritual successor to my college radio station for ten years. Spotify failed. Apple Music failed. Internet radio aggregators failed. The thing I wanted was: a single human with great taste, picking songs in a genre-fluid sequence, broadcasting live.

I found it. It's called Radio Cassette and it streams from one bedroom in Hackney, London.

What it is

A free 24/7 internet radio station with one main DJ (real name unclear, on-air name "Mim") plus three or four guest hosts who do weekly shows. The format is roughly: a long block of songs in a loose theme, with brief voice-only intros every six to eight tracks. The themes are, e.g., "songs that build for a minute," "1970s British folk by women," "covers of songs about leaving."

There is no algorithm. There is no playlist generated. There is just a person picking songs in real time and saying a sentence or two between blocks.

What you'll hear

In a recent two-hour stretch I had open: a 1972 Brazilian samba single, a Billie Holiday song from the 50s I'd never heard, a brand-new ambient piano piece by a Berlin artist, an 80s Japanese new-wave track, a Sufjan Stevens Christmas song (in November, which is allowed), and a forty-second clip of a London street musician playing an accordion that the DJ had recorded the previous Tuesday.

This sounds chaotic. It's not. The taste is the through-line. Each transition makes sense in a way that no algorithm has ever managed in my experience.

How to listen

radiocassette dot fm, in a browser tab. There's no app. There's a small chat sidebar where listeners discuss what's playing. The DJ sometimes responds. The chat is, mostly, kind.

The Shazam problem

There's no "what's this song" feature on the player. Two workarounds:

1. Run Shazam on your phone. Works fine.
2. Watch the chat — listeners often ask "what's this?" and the DJ types the answer.

A third option, eventually: the DJ has said an upcoming feature will display the current track. No date.

Why this works

Two reasons:

1. Trust. A single curator with a single coherent taste is the most valuable thing in music discovery. I now hear about eight new artists a month from this station. I have probably bought eight albums on Bandcamp because of it.

2. Background-friendly. Because the talk is brief and the music is varied but coherent, you can leave it on while you work. It's not "background music" in the elevator-music sense — you'll occasionally stop and listen — but it's not so demanding that it's distracting.

What I'd add

A simple "now playing" display. A weekly playlist export. The DJ has hinted both are coming.

Tomorrow: a $14 silicone trivet that has, frankly, no business being this good.