I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station • Hacker News Board

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#21

Post by doublepg23 » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

sockaddr wrote: post #13

elzbardico wrote: post #10

I miss the experience of having career professionals 100% dedicated to the music world curating a list of what I would hear. Of course, it was not perfect, there were ads, most stations played pop slop, but most of the time there was a few stations for your taste, your knew your preferred DJs times and there was a certain sense of community in being a regular fan of a show.

I miss that as well but more than likely (at least in the US) that "curated" channel you use to listen to was probably owned by Clear Channel and probably the same exact content played in every other city where everyone else felt like it was for them as well.

I never experienced but I've heard universities used to have the best curated radio stations.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#22

Post by kanbankaren » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

dewey wrote: post #15

elzbardico wrote: post #10

I miss the experience of having career professionals 100% dedicated to the music world curating a list of what I would hear. Of course, it was not perfect, there were ads, most stations played pop slop, but most of the time there was a few stations for your taste, your knew your preferred DJs times and there was a certain sense of community in being a regular fan of a show.

How much of that do you think is rose tinted glasses and nostalgia? On paper that doesn't sound too different than Apple Music Radio for example where there's radio shows with local DJs or hosts that talk, play music and have curated play lists by a human editor. I'm sure other streaming services have the same and curators can pick from a much larger set of music, from any part of the world. More than they ever could…

Yep. It is mostly nostalgia as there isn't anything better than an AI curating a million songs based on our like/dislikes, but on a macro level, we are at the mercy of people who tune these algorithms.

Are we being 'nudged' to like certain genres or musicians because they are being promoted? Of course, this could happen with a DJ or traditional FM station too, but with centralized AI, you impart that 'nudging' on literally millions of people.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#23

Post by EvanAnderson » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #11

Shilling for an old employer. This is a neat super simple device that takes incoming headphone and converts to FM. Whole House FM Transmitter ( https://wholehousefmtransmitter.com/ )

It's a little pricey for the hobbyist but for "normies" it looks really good. Neat product idea.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#24

Post by toast0 » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

dewey wrote: post #15

elzbardico wrote: post #10

I miss the experience of having career professionals 100% dedicated to the music world curating a list of what I would hear. Of course, it was not perfect, there were ads, most stations played pop slop, but most of the time there was a few stations for your taste, your knew your preferred DJs times and there was a certain sense of community in being a regular fan of a show.

How much of that do you think is rose tinted glasses and nostalgia? On paper that doesn't sound too different than Apple Music Radio for example where there's radio shows with local DJs or hosts that talk, play music and have curated play lists by a human editor. I'm sure other streaming services have the same and curators can pick from a much larger set of music, from any part of the world. More than they ever could…

Eh. I still listen this way. I subscribe to a streaming radio provider in my genre, and there's also a local high school station that plays my genre of music most of the time.

It's much better than what I've experienced with spotify and similar and it's way less effort. I had built a pretty big launchcast preference profile, but it took years of active listening, and in my genre remixes are preferred over original recordings but radio on demand doesn't have them ... you need currated collections, and I'd rather not be the curator.

I do worry about the longevity of the subscription service though... at least some of the channels are very repetitive, it feels like someone set up a currated rotation a while ago that just continues to repeat. They did the sec crowdfunding several years ago and there was a lot of related party transactions that looked too squishy for me, and after the offering expired they did the required years of reporting and its a blackbox again.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#25

Post by pmontra » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

That solves the problem of keeping all the speakers in sync.

I did something similar with IP tech. I put all my MP3s on a SSD connected to a 3 W ARM SoC at home. The software stack is deefuzzer + icecast + a number of different players according to the device I'm using. A web UI to skip to the next song or to search a string and create a playlist with the result. I setup a few channels by genre. I'm listening to my radio right now. The advantage compared to a FM station is that I don't have to care about interference (I would be the bad guy) and I can listen to it wherever I am.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#26

Post by Projectiboga » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

kanbankaren wrote: post #7

You don't even need a Raspberry PI. You can simplify it even further. List of things you need. 1. Smartphone or DAP. 2. Car Bluetooth FM Transmitter (~$20) 3. USB to 12 V car adapter(~$10) 4. Existing FM radio. You can set this up in 5 minutes. Connect the smartphone/DAP using BT or AUX cable. Select a free FM channel and you are ready to go. Also, in the photos, the FM antenna is fully extended which is unnecessary…

This isn't an item to cheap out on. Find one with aptX HD support and decent reviews if you have any room in your budget. I use the bluetooth to FM all the time. I have a pair, one in my car and another in my travel kit for rental cars. The key is to find one with aptX HD and other newer hi-fi codecs as there are older chips still being sold with lower specs as BT has been a thing for awhile now. I just did a search are there are ones that are usb powered or wall powered. Another better method might be a real FCC certified FM transmitter that are marketed for Drive Ins and "church parking lots" and use a bluetooth receiver or a usb-dac as the input.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#27

Post by calmbonsai » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

avian wrote: post #17

sandreas wrote: post #8

Here in Germany you have to be careful when setting up a homemade radio signal - it might be illegal depending on frequency and transmit power. I personally prefer a combination of duckdns.org Beets Navidrome Audiobookshelf Substreamer / DSub PaulWoitaschek/Voice / Audiobookshelf Wireguard You can even make a script do download smart playlists to usb-sticks for kitchen radios without wifi or old car USB.

> Here in Germany you have to be careful when setting up a homemade radio signal - it might be illegal depending on frequency and transmit power. In Germany and everywhere else. The difference is how much it's enforced. Note that this project isn't using that horrible Raspberry Pi GPIO PWM hack that shits all over RF but an off-the-shelf low power car FM transmitter product. I guess if someone knocks on your door you…

At least in the U.S., it's a complete non-issue for an output power that can easily cover the size of a wedding reception as long as you're not using a wide-band transceiver.

You'll want to be "kind" to the extant spectrum and do a responsible frequency sweep to select the "quietest band" prior to broadcasting. And you'll only want to broadcast during the event itself.

The FCC has better things to do than to try and track down an ephemeral milliwatt infringer.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#28

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

gosub100 wrote: post #18

They make low power AM transmitters as well. I bought one for my dad so he could "stream" old music from the Internet to his old tube radios.

What's the audio quality of AM transmission?

I've used an FM dongle to play a tablet through car speakers, which works pretty well.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#29

Post by rikthevik » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #10

I miss the experience of having career professionals 100% dedicated to the music world curating a list of what I would hear. Of course, it was not perfect, there were ads, most stations played pop slop, but most of the time there was a few stations for your taste, your knew your preferred DJs times and there was a certain sense of community in being a regular fan of a show.

https://cfcr.ca/

Lots of community radio still out there! I assume bigger cities would have a solid live music and radio community too.

Re: I replaced Spotify with a homemade FM radio station

#30

Post by tombert » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

I did something similar about a year ago, when I was unemployed.

I made an Icecast-compatible streaming server in Erlang, and an Icecast-compatible stream in Rust. Between songs, I would phone out to the cheapest GPT model and a local TTS model to get unfunny DJ banter, with an infinite stream.

I thought it would be very funny to call it "KUMM -- Playing all stickiest white-hot hits!" because I have the maturity level of a fourteen year old, only to find out that there actually is a KUMM station [1] in real life.

All the songs were from CD rips from my very large collection, and it was pretty fun to write. It was my primary music solution until I eventually got a job, it broke, and I didn't prioritize fixing it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KUMM