Radio listeners can now tune into jazz from New York, opera from Madrid or the latest news from Moscow at the tap of a map on their smartphone or computer wherever in the world they are.
The Radio Garden, an application that launched this week, allows users to explore live internet streams of radio stations via a spinning map of the globe.
The Google Earth-style graphic is covered with hundreds of green dots showing where local stations are broadcasting. In big cities such as Paris, Buenos Aires and Nairobi the site will let users choose from several.
A click on New York brings up a choice of Brooklyn College Radio, the city’s public station WNYC and more than 20 others. It means a listener could tune in to a late-night jazz show while eating breakfast in the UK. Users can also access historical radio broadcasts and jingles.
The app was designed and produced by two Dutch design studios, Studio Puckey and Studio Moniker, in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
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“From its very beginning, radio signals have crossed borders,” the site says. “Radio makers and listeners have imagined both connecting with distant cultures as well as re-connecting with people ‘from home’ from thousands of miles away,” it adds.