Spoon Radio - Hard Rock

In Switzerland's ordering this is number 35 of 126, 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.

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.

The stream runs at 128 kbps, level with Switzerland's median. Bitrate stops being interesting once a station is at the local norm, and the useful question moves on to whether the stream stays up, which no snapshot can answer.

The format here is AAC+, against a listing for Switzerland 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 spoonradiohardrock.ice.infomaniak.ch, an address unique to this entry in Switzerland's 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.