Imagine looking at Google Earth and seeing thousands of tiny green dots all over the map, with each one representing a playable radio station. That’s pretty much Radio Garden, a mobile and web app offering a fun way to enjoy live radio from around the world.
We first reported on Radio Garden soon after its launch in 2016. But since then, it’s had a number of design makeovers while constantly adding thousands of new local and national stations (and deleting defunct ones). In recent days, for reasons not entirely clear, Radio Garden has also been causing a buzz on social media, so we’ve decided to revisit it in case you haven’t had a chance to try it yet.
The free service is available via Radio Garden’s iOS app, Android app, and website, though at the current time, it doesn’t play nice with the Brave browser.
To get started, simply spin the globe and zoom in on a place of interest. When you bring a dot inside the green circle at the center of the display, the feed for that station will automatically start playing. The name of the radio station will appear alongside suggestions for other stations in the same area, all of them playable.
You can also search by country, city, and station name, and if you find one you like, you can mark it as a favorite.
Some parts of the world, including China and parts of Africa, obviously have more stations than shown on the map, and Radio Garden says it’s working to expand its station offerings.
Radio Garden is the work of Amsterdam-based studios Puckey and Moniker and emerged from an exhibition project commissioned by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
Starting out as a web-only offering, the team released iOS and Android apps for Radio Garden in 2018. In 2020, the service underwent a major redesign to improve its look and usability. The work appears to have paid off, too, as the apps currently enjoy almost maximum star ratings on each store.