mdworks / Earshot

Earshot

A live radio station starts playing from somewhere on Earth. You cannot see its name, only hear it. Listen, spin the globe and drop your pin.

• 700+live stations
• 130+countries
• 5new stations every day
• 5,000points per round

How to play

1. Turn your sound on and start. Choose today's five stations, which are the same for everyone, or endless mode.
2. Listen. The station plays live, straight from the broadcaster. Its name stays hidden until you guess.
3. Drop your pin on the globe where you think the station is, then press Guess.
4. See how close you were. The real location, the distance and the station's name appear, and you can keep listening.

Each round is worth up to 5,000 points. The score falls smoothly with distance: a pin in the right city earns nearly everything, the right country usually a few thousand, the wrong continent very little. Five rounds make a game of up to 25,000.

Clues, and what they cost

If the audio alone is not enough you can open a clue. Each one is taken off that round's score.

• Local time (−500): the time and weekday where the station is. Useful when a presenter mentions the time.
• Genre (−500): the kind of programme listed for the station, such as news, talk or folk.
• Language (−1,000): the language the station says it broadcasts in.

Tips from playing a lot of rounds

• Adverts give the most away. Prices name the currency, phone numbers have country prefixes, and shops and car dealers name their towns.
• Weather and traffic reports mention rivers, motorways and districts that you can find on the map.
• Accents narrow it down even within a language: Brazilian and European Portuguese, Latin American and Spanish Spanish, Quebec and France French.
• Music is a weaker clue than it seems: international pop plays everywhere, but local folk, regional schlager or a call to prayer are strong hints.
• Station jingles often say the frequency and the city out loud.

Where the stations come from

The station list comes from Radio Browser, a free, community-run directory of internet radio. Every night an automatic job takes the stations that publish their location and keeps only those that pass a few checks:

• the location must fall inside the station's own country, so the answer is right;
• the stream must answer with audio a browser can play, over a secure connection;
• stations that sound like their place come first: local FM, news, talk and stations in the local language, rather than genre jukeboxes that could be anywhere.

The map is built from Natural Earth, which is in the public domain. Earshot does not record or re-host any audio: your browser plays each stream directly from the broadcaster, exactly like a radio app.

Questions

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