I first discovered Radio Garden during the COVID pandemic, where I used the app frequently to enhance my German skills. And in lieu of travelling, hearing foreign music, and listening to foreign radio hosts somewhat satisfied this need.
Radio Garden offers so much, a glimpse at foreign culture, an opportunity to hear a different viewpoint on current affairs, a chance to discover new music – whether on “hip” channels like Australia’s Triple J, or indigenous genres from across the world.
Founded in 2016 in the Netherlands, and now headed by Jonathan Puckey, who describes himself as “Head Gardener” on Twitter, the app’s popularity skyrocketed during COVID, as many people joined for the aforementioned reasons.
The app allows users to experience live radio from over 30,000 stations around the world, with each green seed on the app’s map representing a location with stations, with some locations possessing a sole station, and other larger green seeds possessing multiple.
The list of available stations offers some of the most famous stations in the World, like FIP in France, Fox in the US in addition to far flung ones like North Korea’s Pyongyang FM 105.2, stations in Tahiti, and Vietnam’s Saigoner Radio. You will get hours of entertainment from browsing the stations on offer alone.
You can also bookmark certain stations to appear in a favourite tab, to save you the painstaking effort of finding obscure stations you found and liked over and over again.
Update: as of November 2022, UK users are limited to listening to UK channels due to a licensing issue, whilst Turkey and China have outright banned the platform. Whilst it’s disappointing to see parts of the world become more insular, these issues can be bypassed by a VPN.