Cosmic Fuzz FM

Cosmic Fuzz FM sits at 171 of 466 in the United Kingdom's listing, in the body of the list rather than at either end. This is where most of a national dial actually lives, and it is the part a country hub's first fifty rows never reach.

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 gap here is large: 64 kbps where the United Kingdom's stations typically run 128. 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.

The format here is AAC+, against a listing for the United Kingdom 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 24293.live.streamtheworld.com, an address unique to this entry in the United Kingdom'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.