press play and let the planet tour itself · or tap any station
Station directory: radio-browser.info (public domain, community-maintained) · streams play from broadcasters' own servers · Land: Natural Earth · v436
RADIO · LISTEN TO THE PLANET
Listen to the Planet
Every glyph on the globe above is a real internet radio station, placed where it broadcasts from. Tap one and it plays — live, from the broadcaster’s own servers— while the day/night line sweeps the world and the player tells you the approximate local time where your music is coming from. Spin to Reykjavík for late-night jazz, Lagos for afrobeats at noon, Tokyo for morning news. The planet, as a tuner dial.
Play the game
Think you can place a station by ear? Earwitnessplays a real, live broadcast with its name hidden — you listen for the language, the music and the ads, then drop a pin on the globe where you think it’s coming from. Five signals, scored by distance. There’s a daily challenge— the same five for everyone, every day — with a streak to keep and a result you can share.
Hold the globe still on one city and it comes alive differently: a real local station, the weather there at this moment, and the city’s own clock — one living page. Somewhere on Earth it’s always raining; follow it in.
187cities and counting — the world’s major radio markets, each a genuinely local station over its real, live sky.
Tune into where it’s happening
Somewhere on Earth the ground is shaking, a storm is coming ashore, or a river is over its banks — and a local station is on the air through it. Follow the world’s live hazards to the nearest broadcaster and hear the place in its own voice, as it happens.
The line between day and night never stops crossing the planet — and radio is playing on both edges of it. Sit on the bright side for breakfast radio chasing the sunrise, or cross to the far side for the lonely small hours, where someone is still on air at 3 a.m.
The aurora is a permanent ring of light around the pole, and it’s hanging over a real town with a radio station on the air beneath it right now. Follow the live NOAA forecast to whichever northern (or southern) town has the lights overhead this minute — or to a city sitting inside a storm cell.
Every station you tune into gets stamped — a private, on-this-device record of the countries and places you’ve heard, and how much of the world that adds up to. Collect them all.
You’re not the only one tuned in. See the live pulse — how many are listening on LiveEarthViewer this minute, where they are, and which stations are hot — counted live, never estimated.
The globe shows 8,363 stations— the community-verified, precisely-located slice of a much bigger world. Behind it sit 29,312 playable streams from a directory of 59,602 listed stations across 147 countries, maintained by the volunteer-run radio-browser.info project. Internet radio is a living thing — streams die, move and get geo-blocked daily, so some stations won’t answer when you tap. The player says so honestly and offers the next one nearby.
Ranked by the radio-browser community’s own votes — the directory’s signal, shown as-is. Tap any of them to land on the globe with the station armed; one more tap plays it.
Station glyphs are tinted by their leading genre — and each genre family has its own listening hub with a top-25 you can play right on the page: pop (3,244), news-talk (2,883), rock (2,047), electronic (1,892), world (1,026), jazz (873), classical (711). The remaining 19,156 stations carry no genre tag in the directory and glow radar-green.
Field guides
How the listening console actually works — the streams, the honest numbers behind the globe, and the modes that ride the day/night line, from sunrise to the small hours.