Ask Lemmy

SomaFm is great

I've asked some DJ's what radio they listen too and NTS has been unanimously answered. Very good variety, playlist for any mood and discovery is great as well.

KEXP.org - public indie radio out of Seattle. Has good shows over the course of the day. I really like the afternoon show (1 pm pacific time) on Thursday. The DJ does "OG Thursday" where he picks a group or artist and highlights songs that sample them.

Thecurrent.org - kinda the same deal out of Minneapolis, but also different

Both available on their website or through the https://www.radio-browser.info/ database

The two ancient stalwarts are still up and running:

Icecast directory: https://dir.xiph.org/

Shoutcast directory: https://directory.shoutcast.com/

Note that these are sites containing links to online radio stations not a statement about the quality of what might be available. Shoutcast has the better website, but is also slightly more oriented towards commercial content. Given that you say you like ads from other countries, maybe that's the one you'd want to try first.

Flashback Alternatives

Past, Present and Future of Classic Alternative

punk, new wave, post-punk alternative
music requests.
For those from Ontario it's very much like CFNY radio through the 80s

radiparadise.com is curated and cute

ChIRP, Chicago Independent Radio Project, is an ad-free station that broadcasts over the Internet. They have volunteer DJs and you can make requests and everything. Though they don't take paid ads, they do occasionally do PSAs and promotions for local charity events.

https://chirpradio.org/

https://wxpn.org/ - community-funded, all kinds of shows playing all kinds of music

Edit:

Bonus! It’s an actual radio station :)

LoFi Girl if you’re looking for real downtempo background noise. Lived on it when I was doing Uni.

If you’re the patient and organized type, you can download their entire library from their main site. The advantage here is that the livestream gets a little repetitive after a while.

I discovered a lot of interesting new music through BBC Radio 6 Music.

Jamendo streams different genres as stations without adverts/publicity.

https://www.jamendo.com/radios

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Or put a search string into YT,

'creative Commons mix '

( eg. creative Commons mix lofi' )

Will give something like this playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYOHQ3GXK5JIIYcSfxDzB8vJagRKAw8XN

My most common recommendation is campus-fm.com, which is a frontend for listening to a bunch of North American college radio stations. Wide net but may help you find various shows whose programming you dig.

I really love WFMU in New Jersey. Of course they broadcast on FM, but they have four live streams (I especially like the 'Give the Drummer Radio' stream https://wfmu.org/drummer). Take a look at the schedules - you'll find lots of music that you won't hear on mainstream radio, across a wide range of different genres, and all of it is archived so you can listen to past shows and see the playlists for each one. It's listener supported, so there are no adverts except for their own WFMU fund raising. My favourite shows:

• Continental Subway with David Dichelle, on the Drummer stream, playing music in many languages - https://wfmu.org/playlists/CW
• This is the Modern World, with 'Trouble', on the main WFMU stream. Incredibly eclectic - https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/LM

Not super on-topic, being more traditional radio than internet, but I hope to boost the mission anyway:

https://www.prometheusradio.org/

https://fip.fr/ 's main and Jazz radio. fm4 ORF Also France Musique.

Use RadioDroid on F-Droid if you use Android.

May I ask how you downloaded your Spotify playlist? I'd love to do that. Or I may go back to apple music as I still have an account there, but would love to move my list over somehow.