Nostalgie HQ

In France's listing Nostalgie HQ lands at 5 of 710, which puts it on the first or second page of the country hub rather than in its tail.

With 528 opens recorded, this is one of the directory's heavily played streams. That is the strongest thing the public data says about any station, and it is still a measure of traffic through one directory rather than of audience.

No language is recorded against this station. The field is optional in the public directory and a great many entries skip it, so an empty language says nothing about what you will hear when you press play. It does keep the station off the language shelves, since a shelf built on guesses would be worse than a shelf with holes.

Twice the local median and then some: 320 kbps where France's stations typically manage 128. Whether you can hear the difference depends entirely on what you are listening on, but the headroom is there.

Where France's stations mostly use MP3, this one uses AAC. Worth a line only because it is a difference, and because the country page's format breakdown is one of the quicker ways to see which providers a national dial runs on.

64 of France's entries are served from streaming.nrjaudio.fm, this one among them. A shared host means a shared fate. If this stream is silent, the fastest check is not this station's own site but whether its neighbours on the same platform are playing.