Streaming music is the pinnacle of audio entertainment convenience, but you can grow bored listening to the algorithm’s recommendations. There’s something special and comforting about live radio that modern streaming music hasn’t fully captured. Enter Radio Garden (free, with a premium option), available on Android, iOS, and the web. This unique streaming service lets you tune in to worldwide radio stations by spinning an on-screen globe, offering an eclectic music selection well outside your comfort zone. Radio Garden lacks the robust feature set found in SiriusXM, our Editors’ Choice winner for live radio, but it’s an enjoyable music app if you need a break from the norm.
How Much Does Radio Garden Cost?
Radio Garden is free, with pop-up ads being the only commerce-based inconvenience. They appear every few minutes while you listen to tunes, but they aren’t intrusive. You can close or ignore the ads.
The service has a paid tier: Radio Garden Premium, which costs $2.99 per month or $24.99 per year. Premium access removes the ads, and gives you an equalizer for fine-tuning the listening experience. It also includes a sleep timer to automatically stop playback after a certain time. Finally, Premium’s Family Sharing feature lets you share the service’s international music with four other people.
However, Radio Garden is serviceable without a premium subscription. For example, the stations’ broadcasts determine the streams’ bit rates and audio quality (you’re not guaranteed hi-res audio), so the equalizer is nice but unnecessary. Likewise, there’s no incentive to subscribe to Family Sharing, either, since the service has a free tier. In truth, you should sign up only if you simply wish to support this cool music-discovery app. Otherwise, just tune in and enjoy what’s offered.
(Credit: Radio Garden/PCMag)
How Radio Garden Works
The Radio Garden app and browser versions work identically. They display a 3D sphere of the world that you spin by dragging your finger (or mouse cursor in the browser version) across the screen. Green dots displayed within each region represent live radio stations on the air. You can refine your search by zooming in and selecting alternative stations in the area.
After selecting cities with multiple stations, like New York, tapping the Explore icon lets you view a list of the many broadcasts. In the New York City example, you can pick from all 208 stations or dive into shorter lists in the Explore window, including Popular, Picks of the Area, and Nearby New York. You can also jump to alternative cities within a country. In my tests, these cities included Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco.
Radio Garden has a relatively sparse feature selection compared with Apple Music, Spotify, SiriusXM, and other top streaming music services. The big draw is the enormous live radio selection. Radio Garden lets you favorite stations, which appear in the Favorites section, but that’s about it. iHeartRadio and similar radio-focused services offer alternative content like news, podcasts, concert listings, lyrics, and playlists. Likewise, SiriusXM has a video component and an extremely useful buffering feature that lets you rewind live radio. Radio Garden lacks these extras. It’s live listening and nothing else.
(Credit: Radio Garden/PCMag)
The Radio Garden Listening Experience
I started my Radio Garden adventure in New York by tuning in to Rewound Radio in Tarrytown and catching “Turn the Beat Around” by Vicki Sue Robinson. Crossing the border up north, I scouted popular stations in Montreal, Canada, and listened to “Drift” by Jean-Jerome on Gravity House Radio. I slid my finger across the screen to see what was playing in Europe, and found myself listening to the slick guitar riffs in “Do What You Like” by Blind Faith on RKV Radio in Vego, Spain. Scrolling down to Africa, I tuned in to Ijebu Ode in Nigeria and heard “I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys on Super FM 96.3. After more swiping, I arrived in Japan and enjoyed “Tusa” by Los Barraza on Super Tokio Radio. It was a fun way to discover music outside of my wheelhouse.
If scrolling the globe with your fingertip or mouse sounds tedious, you can click the Search icon and enter a country, city, or station. Likewise, the Browse function highlights the Radio Garden team’s dozen playlist recommendations, a selection of stations based on a particular mood or interest.
Each playlist suggestion has a descriptive blurb about the city and station, which makes for an interesting read. For example, the Fringe City playlist includes the Pan African Space Station from Capetown, South Africa; Soma FM The Dark Zone from San Francisco, California; the Kyoto Connection from Buenos Aires Argentina; and 8 Ball Radio from NYC. The idea is to introduce you to these fascinating cities’ experimental and distinctive tracks. That said, it’s refreshing to spin the globe and listen to whatever you find.
Radio Garden’s sound is fine overall, but as mentioned, the stream quality depends on the broadcast. Some stations provide crisp audio, while others can sound a bit tinny or hollow. New York City’s East Village Radio offers loud, crystal clear jazzy tunes, whereas KPISS sounds a bit muted by comparison. By swinging over to the official KPISS website, I verified that the quality between the site stream and Radio Garden’s stream was the same.
(Credit: Radio Garden)
Verdict: A Cool Audio Trip Around the World
As an avid listener who misses radio’s heyday, Radio Garden is a truly entertaining app. It delivers exactly what it promises: no-frills global access to streaming radio. Sure, you’ll get the occasional pop-up ad with the free version, but it’s a small price to pay. For a richer audio experience, Editors’ Choice winner SiriusXM offers a vastly more comprehensive feature set, including video shows, buffering and rewind functionality, and curated channels. Nonetheless, Radio Garden’s expansive radio offerings and accessibility make it an app you should consider as an alternative to the typical streaming music services.
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The Bottom Line
Radio Garden is an intriguing streaming music service that lets you spin a digital earth to find new tunes, but it lacks rival apps’ robust extras like podcasts, videos, and purchasable concert tickets.
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About Gabriel Zamora
