Along with the ability to blacklist and add new songs, I hope that I will eventually end up with a huge collection of only the best songs (for my taste)

I know a couple people who dealt with ASCAP and BMI in the context of small businesses. The association reps sounded a lot like stereotypical mafia "enforcers", making "It'd be a shame if something happened to your business..." kinds of veiled threats even when told the venue had strict rules allowing only original or public domain performances. (Their people also kept coming back, over and over again, much like vampires.) This was nearly 20 years ago but I doubt their tactics are much different today.

https://www.kpbj.fm/

There are many more LFPMs out there too!

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 can point your finger to whoever in Germany sold you that.

I have a list of "Shows" I follow, with regular updates from star guests (Tim Reaper for jungle music [1] , Lena Raine for video game OST [2], ...)

Their "NTS Guide to..." [3] is really great to peek into a new genre as well.

I highly recommend.

[1] https://www.nts.live/shows/tim-reaper

[2] https://www.nts.live/shows/lena-raine

[3] https://www.nts.live/shows/the-nts-guide-to

This means you have access to the best terrestrial stations, as well as some (often quite niche) Internet-only options.

I find BBC (1-4 + world), Deutschlandfunk (numerous stations), Radio Swiss Classic (available in German, French, and Italian), France Inter / France Culture, and a number of other broadcasters (usually public, and hence with little or no advertising) generally appealing, and preferable to most of what I can tune in locally (OTA AM and FM are all but dead). Tastes run to classical, jazz, and blues, though you can find other options as well.

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

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

Old radios have the station locations (cities all over the world) as labels for the tuner: https://www.radioheritage.com/story354/

Or: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/european-cities-rad...?

A further (well, different) hack would be to combine this hardware dial with stream URLs e.g. from https://radio.garden/ ...

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 at a radio station where they had to order and ship CDs around.

There's also many independent internet radio stations or music podcasts these days which can be launched for little money, don't require a broadcasting license and can be listened to from any place in the world.

I understand the nostalgia angle, but objectively it seems like what we currently have is better and more open on all counts.

FM broadcasts do a high pass at 50 Hz and stop at 15 kHz. The best SNR is only ~50 dB which is already achieved by plain old SBC. There is no need for higher fidelity audio codecs like AAC/aptX/aptX HD/LDAC besides the fact that most smartphones don't support aptX or aptX HD.

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.

Indeed - radioparadise.com is a quite nice Internet Radio

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.

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.

But don't underestimate the stubbornness and time some people can dedicate to complaining to authorities. You might have a neighbor that will send letters about how they have to pay mandatory monthly bills for the national public broadcast they now can't listen to. They will complain and complain enough that eventually the broadcaster will send someone over with a spectrum analyzer and then the ball starts rolling. There have been court cases over stuff like that in this corner of Europe.

But I agree, you can argue those offenders went out of their way to cause trouble. In the cases I read people kept doing stupid things even after several warnings and apparently only got their lesson only when dragged into court.

Don’t mess with radios if you’re not going to be mindful of your surroundings. But hey, we let people drive cars, those are vastly more dangerous.