Radio Essen

In Germany's ordering this is number 667 of 1,409, which is the middle of the list. The stations either side of it are a better guide to what the country sounds like than the head of the list is, because the head is the same few famous streams in every country.

The open count against Radio Essen is four, which is enough to know the stream has been played through the directory and not enough to compare it with anything. Small counts are the normal case out here, and a ranking built from them separates stations by luck as much as by interest.

Radio Essen reports no bitrate to the directory. Rather than print a zero or invent an average, the page says nothing, which is the same policy every empty field on this site gets.

The format here is AAC, against a listing for Germany overwhelmingly made of MP3. Both play in a browser; the difference shows up in how much quality survives at a given bitrate, where AAC has the advantage at lower rates.

Its audio comes from edge67.streamonkey.net. Two other stations in Germany stream from the same host, which is a smaller sharing than the big platforms and often means the same people run them all.