SkyRadio HITS

In the Netherlands' ordering this is number 169 of 302, 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 SkyRadio HITS is three, 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.

The gap here is large: 64 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.

SkyRadio HITS streams in AAC+ while most of the Netherlands' dial is MP3. Codec choice is mostly invisible to a listener, and it is one of the clearest fingerprints of which hosting provider a station uses, since providers default their customers into a format and few customers ever change it.

33 of the Netherlands' entries are served from playerservices.streamtheworld.com, 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.