JOE

Held against the 302 stations in the Netherlands on this site, this one is in the leading three. The order is the directory's count of stream opens rather than anybody's judgement, which is worth saying because a leading position on a list like this reflects habit as much as anything else.

The directory counts 78 opens against this stream. That is well above the Netherlands' median and it is the reason the station sits where it does on the country list, since the ordering is the count and nothing else.

The gap here is large: 95 kbps where the Netherlands' stations typically run 192. Rates at this level were designed for dial-up and for mobile data that was billed by the megabyte, and plenty of stations simply never changed the setting.

Where the Netherlands' 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.

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