The 15 Coolest Internet Radio Stations Around the World

While commercial FM stations still exist, a lot of them are driven by algorithms and corporate perceptions of listening habits, which, in the end, makes them as bland as the Spotify playlists they’re ostensibly battling against. But, with independent internet stations, usually run by volunteers who do it only for the joy it brings them, there’s space for eccentricity.

By Tiernan Cannon | April 14, 2025 | 9:00am

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The 15 Coolest Internet Radio Stations Around the World

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I am an only child, which, admittedly, is a strange way to open a listicle counting off some of the world’s cool internet radio stations, but bear with me. I am an only child and, as such, I spent an awful lot of my childhood and adolescence alone, soundtracked by endless hours of music and radio. I loved the experience of radio, be it the silly, family-friendly banter of breakfast radio DJs, the electric thrill of a favored song unexpectedly belting out of the speakers, or even, on a vague level, the self-serious baritone of stuffy political analysts offering their read of the day’s issues. I was especially enamored by night-time radio, where the DJs were a little less technically sharp and weren’t obliged to inject a forced glee into their voices. Night-time radio was a seductive affair for a young mind, transgressive in its way, as, in a world before Spotify, and even with YouTube still in its infancy, this was where weird and new music could be heard.

I developed quite intense parasocial relationships with the presenters I listened to, which, sad as it may sound, is a habit I retain to this day. It’s an odd dynamic, but a committed radio listener comes to trust their DJ to the extent that it almost feels like a friendship, albeit an entirely one-sided one. It’s an experience that cannot be replicated, which, to my mind, partly explains why radio endures in this bleak era of Spotify playlists and algorithms. There are plenty of people on this earth who are perfectly happy to consume whatever music the algorithm feeds them—it may well be the vast majority—but there are, unquestionably, those of us who pine for a human being at the controls, selecting songs by feel and instinct and telling us about them in their own idiosyncratic manner.

The Lot Radio (Brooklyn, USA)

The Lot Radio, if memory serves, was my introduction to the world of hip, internet-based radio stations. I don’t quite recall how I first landed on it as a young person, but, when I did, I quickly became enamored, often tuning in to the livestreams, where I could watch, through the magic of webcam, these oft-tattooed and certainly well-dressed adults spinning vinyl in a small booth decorated with stickers, inevitably looking very fucking cool as they did it. I loved it so much that, when I actually visited Brooklyn for the first and only time as a 21-year-old, I had to seek out the parking lot where the station is housed. I dragged two friends along with me, and, when we arrived on a cool, sunny November afternoon, we found in this lot a modest shipping container with an open window and a man selling coffee and donuts out of it. I saw no evidence of a radio station, until, after I asked the barista what the story was, he leant lazily back and opened a door behind him, revealing the very sticker-covered room I’d watched so many hours of from across the Atlantic, and, within it, two DJs cooly hunched over the decks. The hipster sexiness of the whole thing blew my little mind, and I retain a soft spot for the station still, all these years later.

Refuge Worldwide (Berlin, Germany)

Refuge Worldwide, one of several internet radio stations based in Berlin, traces its history back to 2015, which was a consequential year for Germany and Europe in general. It marked a high point of what came to be bleakly termed the “European migrant crisis,” referring to a period in which significant numbers of people—mainly from the Middle East—traveled to Europe to seek safety and refuge. It was a big shock for the continent—one it arguably never recovered from—but, amid all the anti-migrant fretting that resulted from that shock, and which endures to this day, what was lost was a widespread recognition of how difficult things have been for many of the people who actually arrived. Life as a refugee in Europe can be extremely difficult, and it was with this stark fact in mind that a fundraising initiative called Refuge was born in Berlin. The Refuge project has raised money for several causes by putting on music events and club nights, and, in 2021, it launched Refuge Worldwide, its little radio station. Based in a place called Oona Bar, the station broadcasts great music programs and interesting talk shows, all of which are infused with the same solidaristic values of the original initiative.

Hà Nội Community Radio (Hà Nội, Vietnam)

There are so many internet stations out there, many of which share a similar feel and eclectic sound, so it can be difficult, as an outsider, to discern the differences between them. But, when a station bears some unique marker—some feature which is able to pull you, the listener, through the digital stream and into the physical space from which the sounds are being broadcast—it can be a powerfully evocative thing. Hà Nội Community Radio, based in the Vietnamese capital, is a lovely little station which, whenever I’ve listened, has introduced me to some great dance music. But, the real reason it stands out to me—and this may sound a bit frivolous, but I don’t mean it to—is that many of its video streams feature a big train thundering past the DJs’ backs, and, plainly, I find that exciting. The station broadcasts from multiple sites around Hà Nội, but one of its homes is Ray Quan Station Bar, which is situated along a train track. When you’re watching a DJ play a set there, and a train speeds past them, you can almost feel the warm breeze that’s generated and smell the dust that’s kicked up. It’s a vivid touch that, honestly, helps the station to stick in my mind.

Radio Alhara (Bethlehem, West Bank of Palestine)

Radio Alhara launched in March 2020, during those early days of the COVID pandemic, and, at its inception, it represented a platform for its founders, who were spread across the West Bank, Bethlehem, Beirut, and Jordan, to keep in touch with each other and share tunes. In the years since, the station has grown and grown, pumping out wonderful music and fascinating talk shows, but, aside from simply acting as a platform for great audio content, the station has come to represent something else, too. Israeli violence and aggression in the region has intensified since 2020, culminating, of course, in the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, which has seen more than 62,000 people killed. Through it all, Radio Alhara has continued to broadcast, telling stories and playing music, and, while the reality of what is happening to the Palestinians cannot but lead to despair at times, the station’s broadcasts are about much more than that. They highlight the human capacity for love and joy, even in the face of unthinkable horror, demonstrating, ultimately, what it means for people to remain unbroken.

Kiosk Radio (Brussels, Belgium)

Parc de Bruxelles is, as the name should clearly imply, even to the English speakers among us, a beautiful park at the heart of Brussels, the capital city of Belgium and the European Union. With its prettily manicured gardens, tree-lined promenades, and neoclassical stylings, the park is an extraordinarily pleasant place to wander through on a sunny day, which, on March 17th, 2023, is what I found myself doing. Proud Irishman though I am, I had somehow managed to forget the significance of that particular date, but it was, indeed, Saint Patrick’s day, and I would be reminded of that fact in a most pleasing way. It began subtly, at first, so subtly that I could at first ignore the anomaly, but, the closer I walked towards it, the clearer it became: the unmistakable, deep voice of Irish folk singer Christy Moore was floating on the wind. That was not expected, in this grand, royal Belgian park, so I followed the sound with interest, until, eventually, I found the source: Kiosk Radio, a little wooden shack, selling coffee and strong Belgian beer and housing a small radio studio. A DJ was in the studio, blaring out a load of Irish folk tunes for the day that was in it, so, I ordered myself a beer, took a seat on a nearby tree stump, and got pleasantly drunk on my own, listening to the music of home and people-watching the stylish continental sorts on their afternoon walks. That memory alone makes Kiosk Radio one of my favorite stations, but their wider output, too, is marvelous.

Oroko Radio (Accra, Ghana)

The website for Oroko Radio, unlike most internet stations one is likely to encounter, is pleasingly bright and warm and colorful—so that’s a positive right off the bat. The station is based in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, and its stated aim is to “reclaim and recenter narratives from the African and Diasporic artistic communities.” Naturally enough, it places an emphasis on people associated with Accra itself, but it is, nonetheless, a global station, with residents recording shows from all over the place, all bound by a love for music from and inspired by Africa. West Africa, in particular, has a rich history of producing great music—there are several compilations that make that point far better than any words on a webpage ever could—so it is a precious thing to have a far-reaching station based in the region dedicated to showcasing that fact.

Boogaloo Radio (London, UK)

Defined by bare wood furnishings and an old-worldly charm, the Boogaloo is a pleasant pub in the north of London which enjoys a little place in rock ’n’ folklore. Back in the day, when it went by the rather more amusing name of Filthy McNasty’s, the establishment was apparently a favored drinking spot of some illustrious, bohemian types: Shane McGowan, who supposedly lived upstairs for a while; Joe Strummer; Nick Cave—people of that caliber. It’s a fine legacy for a pub to have, and, if its website is anything to go by, its owners are perfectly eager to associate the place with such figures—and why not? What is rock and roll, if not for dubious mythologies and self-aggrandizement?—but the reason I like it today, in 2025, is because it’s home to a little station called Boogaloo Radio. Pints and good tunes are a fine match, but, even when listening to a broadcast from afar, Boogaloo stands out from many other internet stations on aesthetics alone. A lot of websites that host indie radio stations tend to bear a similar feel—sleek, hip and shiny—but Boogaloo Radio has a dustier feel, which, to be clear, I mean in a very positive sense.

East Side Radio (Lisbon, Portugal)

There came a point some years ago now, presumably when Berlin began first to buckle a bit under the weight of being the European hipster’s go-to destination, that cool wandering types started to seek out a new Mecca. They found it in Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, which, certainly for a time, became a magnet for millennial avocado-eaters. It is essential that such a city boast a quality internet radio station, and, so far as I know, Lisbon has at least two. Rádio Quântica I am less familiar with, but the other, East Side Radio, I have listened to several times and have tended to enjoy—there is a DJ on there now, as I type, hitting just the spot with a punky little number Shazam has correctly identified as “Hyperventilation” by Never Plenty. East Side Radio, during its earlier days, broadcast out of a food truck, which strikes me as very charming, but, thankfully, it’s retained a similar quirk now that it’s moved on, operating today from a studio set up at the back of a taqueria. It’s still cool, then.

radiOrakel (Oslo, Norway)

Launched in 1982, Oslo’s radiOrakel bears a reasonable claim to being the oldest female-driven, feminist radio station in the world. It places great emphasis on women and minority genders, be that through the music it plays or the presenters it gives a platform to, but the station stresses that it is open to all feminists, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. Musically I’ve heard all sorts, but it must be said that, for a person who doesn’t speak Norwegian, there is a lot that can be lost tuning in, given the prevalence of talk shows that are broadcast. The station’s commitments to radical, progressive politics are, presumably, at the core of the presenters’ words, but, I’m afraid to say, all I can do as a listener is wait for the music and listen haplessly to the admittedly soothing quality of the Norwegian accent.

Radio Buena Vida (Glasgow, Scotland)

Café culture in Ireland and the UK—the two countries I know best—isn’t quite the same as it is out yonder, on the European mainland. I’m certain the reason has something to do with the typically bleak, rainy weather of the British aisles, which keeps people sad and wound up, whereas, in the sunnier reaches of the continent, it is possible to walk around without tension, and to sit in or outside a café and feel, genuinely, at ease. Taking a seat in a British or Irish café, there is often an overbearing feeling, emanating from the owner, that it is your duty to leave as soon as the last drop of coffee is consumed, to make way for new paying customers. But on the continent, particularly down south, it feels legitimate to get a single coffee and stay all day, maybe treating yourself to a glass of wine in the evening and listening to good music as you drink it. I bring all this up, because, in Glasgow, the owners of Café Buena Vida deliberately try to evoke the continental café experience in their little establishment. To help with that, they set up a radio station on-site, which, in addition to broadcasting to faraway strangers online, feeds great music to their customers.

Internet Public Radio (Guadalajara, Mexico)

There is a need here, in the interest of honesty, for a disclosure: for the last three months, my friend and I have been doing a monthly show on Internet Public Radio. But, that aside, I really do plainly like the station’s output. Its origins lie in Guadalajara, Mexico, but the station fully embraces the global potential of internet radio by broadcasting shows recorded from all over the place. I find it quite exciting to explore the archive of shows on the website, navigating through it by genre, and discovering all the different cities of the world from which these sounds come. The musical output, like most internet stations, is varied, but shout out to a show called Hypnotic Tango Series, which I stumbled upon the other day, while I was suffering from a particularly acute bout of writer’s block. I was in an edgy, fretful sort of mood, but that show’s ambient sounds set in without me really paying attention, and, eventually, my jangled nerves had been so soothed that I soon managed to pump out a couple thousand words.

Seoul Community Radio (Seoul, South Korea)

There is, I must say, a fair amount of projection involved in my enjoyment of Seoul Community Radio. I have never been to Seoul, and, even though I would quite like to, I have no plans to get there any time soon. Watching streams, then, of SCR’s parties is about as close as I’m going to get, and, for now, that will do fine—there is something oddly compelling about peering through a video stream and seeing what a faraway city’s hipsters are getting up to. The space that houses the station’s studio, if video evidence is to be believed, seems like it would be a very fun place to spend a night, but, beyond the studio itself, the station’s organizers do plenty of events around South Korea and beyond. They’ll even be in my home city of London shortly, helping to curate a stage at the upcoming South by Southwest event that’s taking place there.

Dublin Digital Radio (Dublin, Ireland)

Commercial radio in Ireland is, I’m afraid to say, a bleak enough affair these days. While the weird, night-time hours of big stations can, from time to time, introduce listeners to some interesting programming, the day-time shows, by and large, are quite grim. There’s a lot of music by the contemporary era’s pop stars, which is understandable enough, but there’s also a bizarre fixation on the pop music of the late 2000s and early 2010s, as if all that stuff is particularly worth preserving. It’s not the fact that they play that era per se, but the frequency with which one is likely to hear “Happy” by Pharrell, “Chandelier” by Sia, or “Low” by Flo Rida throughout a given week is, frankly, upsetting. These are not the sorts of tunes called for in 2025, but, for enigmatic commercial reasons I surely do not understand, that’s where mainstream radio appears to be stuck throughout the country. It is a great mercy, then, that Dublin Digital Radio has been operating for the last decade or so, offering a program more representative of the culturally adventurous nature of Dublin and Ireland at-large.

Cannibal Radio (Athens, Greece)

Athens is my favorite city in the world, and I was fortunate enough to live there for a short while, before the pandemic got going and rather ruined the bohemian fantasy I’d created for myself there. It is a beautifully chaotic city of artists, anarchists and people with profoundly luscious hair, and, in the years since I left, I’ve never fully gotten over it. I miss walking the maze of streets which would, almost inevitably, bring me unknowingly along to some cool or interesting event, and I miss, too, the nightlife. Dancing was fun in Athens, and, really, anything that helps me to tap into how it felt to do that stands out to me for the positive. Thus, I sometimes listen to Cannibal Radio, a station based in the city which broadcasts fun DJ sets and, sometimes, runs events around Athens which, from the other side of Europe, I wish I could attend.

Radio Worm (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

This is another entry based largely on projection, but Radio Worm is a station based inside an arts venue in Rotterdam which is itself called Worm—and it looks quite remarkable. From the little I know about Worm, it seems that quite a wide-ranging array of art projects and experiments take place there, while the space itself looks very fun. While I cannot speak to that personally, I have tuned into the radio station, which broadcasts radio programs as suitably eclectic and strange as the house within which it lives. There is everything from straight-up mixes to pieces that we might cautiously describe as “audio art,” a vague term which, all the same, I think probably gives you a fair indication of what to expect from it. Discordant sounds of the avant-garde, and whatnot.