SoulRadio

SoulRadio sits in the tail of the Netherlands' 302 entries. The tail is the part of a directory that goes missing first, and it is the part worth keeping: the head of every country's list is the same handful of national broadcasters, and everything that makes a dial local is behind them.

Nothing else in the Netherlands' listing leads with soul. The tag is self-declared, which makes it a statement of how the broadcaster positions itself rather than a classification anyone audited, and on this dial that statement is unique.

At 96 kbps this is one of the lowest rate streams on the Netherlands' dial, whose median is 192 kbps. It will hold a connection almost anywhere, which is the tradeoff being made.

The format here is AAC+, against a listing for the Netherlands 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 straight from 22603.live.streamtheworld.com, an address unique to this entry in the Netherlands' listing. That is the simplest case there is, and it is the one where pressing play tells you the whole truth about whether the station is on air.