Three Online Public Radio Search Tools

This past holiday season, I spent some of my time listening to music from around the globe. I didn’t have to pay a cent for it, and what fun to explore the world in an interactive audio map. Wish you had a way to listen to music from around the world? Explore online public radio with one of these tools.

Why Listen to Public Radio in the Classroom?

EdSurge offers a few compelling reasons that go beyond it being pleasant:

• Listening is a great mode of delivery for informational “texts.” Public radio stories can be a great example of spoken academic language.
• You can hear and interpret emotions, which gives students a powerful connection to the speaker.
• Radio announcers use techniques in their voicing that keep you listening. They create drama with their voice.

Be sure to read the complete article for more reasons why. Others suggest that listening to radio announcers and audio content can help you learn a language.

Tool #1: Radio Garden

Radio Garden makes it easy to explore audio around the world. You can click and drag the world map on your screen to place a circle anywhere in the world you want. Here’s what that looked like as I was listening to music from Spain:

This service is a nonprofit Dutch radio and digital research project. The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision developed Radio Garden from 2013 to 2016. It was a project of The Transnational Radio Knowledge Platform and five other European universities (source). You can add your favorite stations to a list or bookmark them in your browser. Additionally, you can share the link to the station on Twitter, Facebook, or via email.

This site is hours of fun. I ended up visiting many locations around the globe to listen to music in English, Spanish, and others. You can guess what language I was listening to with this picture:

Give it a try.

Tool #2: Radio.net

Radio.net makes it easy to find public radio stations online, albeit in a less interactive way than Radio Garden.

You can type in the name of the desired country and get a list of public radio stations to explore.

This site works more like a search engine, making it easy to locate the public radio stations you want. You will be listening to music pretty quickly after you begin your search, though.

Tool #3: FMRadio Online

Another amazing music finder is FMRadio Online, which lets you surf via radio stations in the United States. But there’s more!

You can find radio stations by country flag, getting a list of radio stations for each country. I found myself captivated by local radio stations in Costa Rica, including classic songs. For any globe-trotter, a world of audio and music lies at your fingertips via your web browser.

Bonus Tip

Want to record audio from an internet radio station or any audio on your computer? Why not give Audacity a try? Look for a brief tutorial post on how to get it done next week.

Feature Image Source

Screenshot by author