106.3 Lafayette's Rock & Alternative

In the United States' ordering this is number 624 of 1,481, 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.

A rock station on a dial where rock is one of the commonest tags: 17 entries in the United States lead with it. The tags are broadcaster-supplied throughout, so read the count as how the United States' broadcasters describe themselves.

106.3 Lafayette's Rock & Alternative streams at 32 kbps against the United States' median of 128, which is less than half the local norm. On a dial where 49% of stations reach 128 kbps, a rate this low stands out, and it usually means either a speech station that never needed more or an encoder that has not been touched in years.

The audio comes from ice7.securenetsystems.net, and 7 other stations in the United States are served from the same address. That is a streaming platform carrying many broadcasters rather than a station running its own server, which is worth knowing for a practical reason: when a platform has a bad night, a whole block of the United States' listing stops answering at once and nothing is wrong with any of the stations in it.