Some ten years ago Shoutcast used to offer a possibility where by calling up a certain URL with a media player, it would return a playlist of ten randomly selected stations out of the entire catalogue. Launching that and listening to the first thing it would pick was a huge part of my morning routine back then and was especially useful during long commutes to school. My appreciation for music from different genres and corners of the world has expanded beyond imagination and every day I would be wondering what is it gonna be today: A morning show on a station somewhere in Greece, a bit of Liszt and Brahms or perhaps an obscure oldschool hiphop mixtape from the depths of Soundcloud. I was reminded about it last week as I put on a podcast in Hungarian and felt like I was on holiday and listening to a local station, not understanding a word but feeling connected with something local at the place I'm at - a really good feeling. Here's an idea for someone with a bit of time and coding skills to spare: we've got Radio Browser and its directory of over 30.000 stations. It's got an API method for fetching an array of randomly selected stations. Perhaps it would be possible to add this as a feature of an existing Radio Browser supporting app or create a dedicated gateway which, upon calling its URL with a media player would hit the RB API with a request and present a random station or more. Can't wait to get out of the usual bubble of streaming services' recommendations of music and experiencing all of the languages available.
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