One of the things I used to do in the early days of HIF was highlight cool little websites I stumbled across. I want to get back to covering those kind of freebies, so today I'm telling you about Radio Garden.
This is a site where you can listen to thousands of local radio stations from across the world! All you have to do is click one of the dots and the site will automatically start playing their broadcast. Obviously, most of the stations are playing local music, but sometimes you'll find talk radio, news, and even sports. I landed on a rural Canadian station once that was broadcasting a local high school basketball game and somehow I ended up listening to most of it 🤣
They have a built-in search function for country, city, or station and there's a “favorites” list for any station you want to save. Another feature I stumbled across is that it's fully backgroundable. By which I mean if you load it on mobile, like your iPhone, then the radio will continue playing even if you switch away from the browser to go into another app.
I've spent A LOT of time on this site over the past few months. I love spinning the globe and picking a radio station at random. Sure, sometimes the music I land on isn't my cup of tea, but I've been surprised how many times I've landed on a pure bop that I never would have heard without this site.
