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Show HN: Air traffic control radio and chill music for focus

Please give credit to SomaFM if you are going to use their steam.

They even have a similar station: https://somafm.com/sf1033/

But it’s the SFPD police scanner + chill beats instead of ATC.

5 days agoWD-42

Yea, they should at least get credit, if not an ongoing donation. AFAIK SomaFM runs entirely on user donations, so rebranding their service without even mentioning them seems kind of crass.

5 days agoryandrake

Wow. I didn't know about this (or might have, as I an obsession with trying to hunt for interesting online tools/services/things, but had never tried). Thank you for mentioning it here! This is awesome. I am loving 'Suburbs of Goa' station. Will explore more.

5 days agocrossroadsguy

Also check out http://di.fm - Goa out the up the wazoo. Other electronic music too.

Also their sister sites of Jazz or Rock are your thing, link on their home page somewhere.

5 days agoTheSpiceIsLife

oh wow, nice to see that Digitally Imported is still in business. I used to listen to them like 20 years ago when it was still possible to stream DI through WinAMP :)

Helped me get through University a lot

5 days agodark-star

They're one of the OGs of internet radio. Radio Paradise too. Probably a couple more I'm forgetting.

5 days agorustyhodge

Hey Rusty! Keep up the great work. We appreciate you.

5 days agoWD-42

You still can if you’re a subscriber, there’s a section in the settings that lets you download a .pls

5 days agoTheSpiceIsLife

I started listening to them in the late 90s or early 2000s. These days I've been a subscriber for years. I even one time did their fun little puzzle they had in their view source that was a recruiting tool. (I did let them know I did it, but wasn't on the market lol)

5 days agobdcravens

I used to listen to Digitally Imported's Eurodance station a lot 10-15 years ago, but eventually it felt like I just kept hearing the same songs, that they never added any new music to it.

5 days agouserabchn

Thank you for introducing me to SomaFM... been online so long and never ran across this.

5 days agost1cky

One of the greatest if not the best online radio stations of all time, in my opinion. Been listening for close to 20 years.

Nerd show Thursday night (8pst?) on Defcon radio is amazing.

5 days agoWD-42

I’ve been listening to SomaFM since 2000! Legendary station.

5 days agodylanz

Yep, I thought the same thing, and this slightly different URL used to give just the SFPD audio:

https://somafm.com/scanner/

I hope that props will be given to SomaFM for their stream and original idea.

5 days agocf100clunk

havent all the PDs across the country switched to encrypted radio coms? and how is this supposed to be relaxing when you could hear a cop screaming for backup after being shot in his pelvis?

5 days agoAI_beffr

In SF, the initial dispatch is still in the clear. But a lot of EMS/Fire traffic is unencrypted, as is certain "event" radio traffic. The SF Police Commission doesn't want SF to have a totally encrypted radio system for accountability reasons.

5 days agorustyhodge

Doesn't have to be getting shot, but I'd say that the probability of non-routine calls that could disrupt your focus is much greater for police radio then for ATC, so it's good that OP chose ATC instead...

5 days agorob74

You got it backwards, cops rarely ever get shot, its the cops doing the shooting of others. The vast majority of cop injuries are self-inflicted from trying to play out their action movie fantasies driving their cars recklessly and getting into accidents, with a few "They broke my hand with their face/skull" thrown in. And even then their injury rate is still significantly below regular blue collar workers.

5 days agoAngryData

Officers getting shot is super rare in SF.

South or Midwest is a different story, of course.

5 days agodoganugurlu

Its not different anywhere else. Cops getting shot in general is incredibly rare.

4 days agoAngryData

Done, credits are placed, revamped the stream a bit, should be more stable.

5 days agousernameis42

Thank you for contributing to the enshittication of the web. We keep our streams open so our listeners can easily and freely access us, unlike most other internet radio services. But if things like this get any traction, we're going to have to start restricting them.

We are paying for your little hobby. SomaFM pays close to $100k a year now on music royalties. We pay based on a per-listener, per-song basis. Sites like yours cost us money even when someone only checks it out for a few seconds.

SomaFM is a tiny organization, we're not some VC-funded startup.

What you're doing is exploiting us.

It's not cool.

5 days agorustyhodge

Sure, I understand, it’s just proof of concept and I selected your platform as one of the best ones, I will pause the stream for now, is there anyway we could chat, if you’re willing to?

5 days agousernameis42

It's still not paused, Olzhas. Putting their player inside an iframe and giving them credit isn't paying their bills.

Also you're still violating LiveATC's TOS.

5 days agonetsharc

You are costing us money. We have to pay royalties to the artist for each person who hears even part of a track. We do not have ads in the streams.

Why are you being so stubborn about honoring our request? Why not play creative commons music, embed SoundCloud tracks, or make your own music mix and pay the royalties on that.

Don't steal our content (that we have to pay royalties for each listener on) for your "proof of concept".

5 days agorustyhodge

My bad, what I thought will be little experiment turned out to something bigger, I really appreciate and respect your work, I took my lessons out of this, stream changed to SoundCloud, in the future I consider to use AI generated chill music stream if there will be any good one soon.

Thank you and I apologize one more time, SomaFM is a legendary and something that I love personally, all the best, Olzhas Y.

P.S. Please tell if there is any other questions left.

4 days agousernameis42

This appears to be

SomaFM https://somafm.com/groovesalad/

plus

LiveATC https://www.liveatc.net

5 days agoenjaydee

Ah, that explains the good music selection!

5 days agosandblast

Yeah these days I just go to LiveATC and start my own choice of music before I start my day. I used LofiATC and it gave me this hobit.

Judging by what happened to LofiATC though, it seems LiveATC was not fond of this kind of things.

5 days agoagentkilo

This is just a crappy ChatGPT-generated site ripping off the SOMA FM _Groove Salad_ stream (https://somafm.com/player24/station/groovesalad). What's the matter, is creating something original too much work for you? Have to go rip off someone else's work because you're too damn lazy to put in the effort?

5 days agovestibule

Who are you judging here? It’s my experience and experiment, I’m glad for the feedback and have my takeaways out of this, do you want to share something meaningful or just came to share hate?

5 days agousernameis42

You seem to be ignoring rustyhodge's multiple comments asking you to stop using Soma's station. Do you mind responding to those comments?

4 days agosomeotherperson

Sure, I was considering all the feedback, stream now changed to Soundcloud, lesson learned and I really appreciate it! Much Love!

4 days agousernameis42

Pretty cool! I remember there was https://www.lofiatc.com/ but looks like it got blocked?

5 days agoeamag

Yeah, I used to use LoFi ATC, but it stopped working. Built something to scratch the itch: https://tonygaeta.com/labs/atc-lofi. OP’s design is solid—great site with good options.

5 days agoLightMorpheus

Any idea why only a handful of airports can be selected?

5 days agod1sxeyes

I could add some more, there is feedback form on the page, feel free to make a request or ask questions

5 days agousernameis42

Don't get me wrong, but I think this is a perfectly good place for a feedback, since you made the Show HN post. There is no need to redirect users to Google Forms.

5 days agosandblast

It was actually more a technical question, the site uses LiveATC streams, there doesn't seem to be any specific reason to limit which stream the user chooses, I was just wondering if there was any particular reason for it. Maybe you could include an 'advanced' section where users can enter their own stream code (e.g. not 'ksfo_twr' but 'lhbp_app2' or whatever?

5 days agod1sxeyes

Yes, thats true, thank you! For sure, it is the place for it.

5 days agousernameis42

DCA please!

5 days agoelicash

+

4 days agousernameis42

and SEA, please! :)

5 days agothedrexster

+

4 days agousernameis42

Yes, lofiatc is not available at the moment

5 days agousernameis42

ATC works for me but not music, I get the following error in the console: Playback error: DOMException: The media resource indicated by the src attribute or assigned media provider object was not suitable

5 days agoneither_color

Should work better now, I guess it's HN effect, will consider updating stream providers in the future, thanks for update!

5 days agousernameis42

Very similar to the Scanner Grannies of the last century.

Back before talk radio was everywhere, old ladies would put on a scanner in the kitchen and leave it on for days, weeks, years just for company.

Sometimes they'd put on the local easy listening station at the same time to fill in the gaps between scanner traffic.

5 days agoreaperducer

Thanks for this term, that's quite interesting! But it's kind of strange that this turns up only in 5 Google results.

5 days agosandblast

This was in the world before there was a Google.

I was a journalist, and scanner grannies regularly called the assignment desk to make sure we hadn't missed something they heard.

5 days agoreaperducer

I present you Honest ChillyATC: https://honest-chillyatc.vercel.app/

Edit: Added Airport and chill music station dropdowns.

I thought it wasn't really cool to embed these streams from volunteer-run (both), donation-supported (SomaFM) and grift it with BuyMeACoffee/Product Hunt. And when SomaFM doesn't like it and reasonably blocks it through CORS, to proxy around it. And not respond to anyone bringing it up here.

5 days agomaeil

This should be the comment.

Or, like, go buy a couple thousand chill tracks, an VHF radio, and actually build your own project.

5 days agoTheSpiceIsLife

Don't forget "pay the music royalties"

5 days agorustyhodge

Excellent. I appreciate what you've done there!

5 days agoArn_Thor

Appreciate that

5 days agorustyhodge

I would add a toggle for disabling the clouds animation. It wastes a lot of CPU cycles for me.

5 days agosandblast

Sure, will consider this and implement soon, thanks for sharing!

5 days agousernameis42

Also consider disabling it by default for the `@media (prefers-reduced-motion)` CSS query.

5 days agowizzwizz4

Was going to say the same. Very cool concept, thank you.

5 days agopcdoodle

Done, it's added to the top panel (cloud icon)

5 days agousernameis42

Yeah that one made my laptop absolutely chug. I want to listen to the page while reading a writeup of why such a simple graphical effect is so inefficiently rendered.

5 days agocausality0

UPD2: I want to thank HN for the great feedback, and I'm very glad many people liked the service, there is couple of agreements that are under review at the moment, so you might face some interruptions of the stream, I'm working on stabilizing it, hopefully this will be solved soon.

5 days agousernameis42

Olzhas, Please remove Groove Salad (and/and any other SomaFM stations) from your site. Not sure what you mean by "agreements that are under review" but stop trying to get around our blocks.

Your behavior is unprofessional.

5 days agorustyhodge

This is very good indeed! Anyways I've been working with stuff like "Apollo 12 – Lunar Lift-Off/Rendezvous/Docking/LM Jettison (Full Mission 20) " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfAgzy-TW1g as background :)

5 days agoinclude

When I turned on the music and chatter, the first audio that played was of a chimpanzee wildly shrieking for about 2 seconds. The song which played after was “Sonargaon” by Daniel Masson, which as far as I can tell does not include that audio. Maybe someone at the KSFO Tower was having a bad day. Very funny.

5 days agopugets

Yeah, that's the pretty part of the life chatter XD

5 days agousernameis42

“You’re on guard”

5 days agoSteveNuts

My 8cores CPU goes to 99% when i visit your website. There's something wrong.

5 days agogatienboquet

Probably cloud animations, will make a fix for that one.

5 days agousernameis42

Thank you for making this, @usernameis42: I was still looking for my 2025 "to sponsor" project. I'm donating to SomaFM now!

5 days agoohuf

Perfect, they definitely deserve it! <3

3 days agousernameis42

Brilliant idea. Although I can't seem to connect to get air traffic audio.

I'm weird and often listen to 3 music track simultaneously for optimal flow state / concentration. Typically chillwave|retrowave at high volume, then a couple of other music tracks at much lower volume (if they contain lyrics, I usually like it if I can't distinguish words, so my brain's internal dialogue isn't competing).

5 days agonomilk

Feature request: an alarm clock mode that gradually fades in stall warnings and mayday chatter when you need to wake up.

5 days agomometsi

I’ve always thought that Enterprise D idling for sleeping too, and the alarm clock is the ship going to warp VERY LOUDLY.

5 days agoTheSpiceIsLife

https://youarelistening.to/ has been doing this for a while (with better ambient music) - granted not a livestream, but the idea.

5 days agoguest__user

Congratulations. That is very well done, indeed, and the music selection is right up my alley.

(FYI: Working on Ubuntu with standard Firefox, no problems at all.)

Thanks for this, whoever you are :-)

Will try to slide you some cash, when possible. You have made my day brighter, friend. Love and peace to you.

5 days agoMrMcCall

Slide a little support to SomaFM - that's where the music is coming from.

5 days agoaerostable_slug

Good call, I sent them a chunk because that's the part I'm gonna use.

I haven't heard a track I didn't like yet. Nice service. I hope they pay the artists.

5 days agoMrMcCall

The music selection is indeed quite good, but I would try to make sure that there are no vocals in the music — those overlap with ATC too unpleasantly for me.

5 days agosandblast

It’s SomaFM. OP has nothing to do with the music selection.

5 days agoWD-42

Glad to hear that, really appreciate that I made your day brighter! Love and peace!

5 days agousernameis42

Quick request: Could you add a toggle for the cloud animation? I like to keep my processors cool :-)

5 days agoMrMcCall

OP will ask you to use Google Contact Form :)

5 days agocreaktive

Done, use cloud icon in the top panel

5 days agousernameis42

That's fantastic! And you just gained a supporter. Enjoy your 'coffee' :-)

Compassion will fix this world, my dear friend, spread the word!

5 days agoMrMcCall

He's abusing LiveATC.net and somafm.com 's bandwidth, as well as royalty payments made by somafm.com (See comments on this page from rustyhodge, the operator of somafm.com), giving him "coffee money" is encouraging the thievery.

5 days agonetsharc

I can't and wouldn't argue with what you say here, but:

a) I donated twice as much to somafm

b) His connecting me with somafm was worth the donation to him. Besides, as an aspiring sw artist, I like to sow good karma seeds.

That said, I would recommend he pay out his sources both fairly and according to their terms. Their terms are their choice, and we should respect them.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. We live and we learn, when we're at our best.

3 days agoMrMcCall

Thank you so much for the support! Really appreciate it, this is my first launch ever and I really glad to see that people love it and even support it! <3

Thank you dear friend, will spread the word!

5 days agousernameis42

Question: any chance I can have this as a radio station in my Alexa??

5 days agoohuf

Great idea, will research it!

5 days agousernameis42

UPD: You could disable cloud animation, button is added to the top panel, thank you for feedback everyone, hope you're enjoying it! Please share any other suggestions or feedback if you could.

5 days agousernameis42

The idea that air traffic control radio can be chill when multiple CRJs crashed within weeks is questionable.

4 days agosoheil

Can you add SoCal (ZLA) approach/departure? There's bound to be lot more audio for the traffic for a general area than a specific airport tower.

5 days agoDarmokJalad1701

Approach/Departure is SCT (SoCal Tracon), ZLA is Los Angeles Center (en route/ARTCC). While there'll be more traffic, it's still spread out across a bunch of sectors that are each typically their own feed.

5 days agovdqtp3

Ah. Fair enough.

And yea, you are right about ZLA vs SCT. I think I mostly fly around SCT and don't venture out much into the wider ZLA area. :)

3 days agoDarmokJalad1701

Same...only really talk to center on long xc's with FF

a day agovdqtp3

This is awesome. Where do you get this music stream?

5 days agocmpaul

It just loads this https://somafm.com/groovesalad/

5 days agoenjaydee

Hopefully OP is going to give them some (a lot of?) money, considering there's a promiment link to Product Hunt that says "Launching soon", and nothing on today's Internet is made just for fun anymore, but for $$$$.

Oh yeah the ATC radio is also directly from liveatc.net servers, which says on their site: "NOTICE: Third-party use of LiveATC live audio streams is prohibited." and this site probably violates many points on https://www.liveatc.net/legal/ (unless, OP did get their permission to do this...).

5 days agonetsharc

OpenAI et al have taught us that breaking millions of website ToCs is completely meaningless.

Soma rightfully seem to have just enabled CORS though after seeing this traffic spike.

Edit: And now OP just started proxying around it, hilariously adversarial when embedding a donation-based service.

5 days agomaeil

So it's like youarelistening.to but for ATC?

5 days agoASinclair

Yes, it's kinda same, ATC communications have a specific rhythm and cadence, the speech is professional, neutral, and emotionally detached, combination with ambient music creates an audio cocoon that helps easily get into flow state and increase your productivity

5 days agousernameis42
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5 days ago

I love the music but fly for a living so my brain is tuned to instantly drop what im doing and laser focus when I hear ATC comms lol.

5 days agogimmemahlulz

Not working for me. Switched to Toronto not connecting either Samsung Galaxy tab s9 fe+ canada android 14

5 days agotallmansixfour

Did you enable the toggle in the "Audio Controls" section? That's what got me at first.

5 days agosandblast

That's some strange UX! Usually a drop down without a button would be associated with an affirmative choice in this day and age.

5 days agoenjaydee

I agree, I would add a default "nothing" entry in the drop down and enable both ATC feed and the music when an option is clicked.

5 days agosandblast

Will try to enhance that one, thanks for sharing feedback

5 days agousernameis42

That or move the toggle up closer to the drop down, though then you have to consider moving the volume slider

5 days agoenjaydee

Probably network issues? Have you tried wifi or other network? Yes, also make sure all toggles are on :)

5 days agousernameis42

Are there any other live streams like this that one can play in the background?

I am aware of liveatc and broadcastify.

5 days agoasimovfan

ATC selection menu does not work properly on IOS safari

5 days agoAngostura

It's me or it's very slow on edge ?

5 days agogatienboquet

Will check that as well, there is feedback form in the footer, if anyone has some suggestions please share it there, thank you!

5 days agousernameis42

Awesome!!!

5 days agorediguanayum

Genius. There should be a whole bunch of these mashups.

Would love some old Apollo capcom with music.

5 days agostevage

Great idea, will process it, thank you!

5 days agousernameis42

asks me to login and the music never loads...

5 days agodwighttk

Applied some fixes, should work now

5 days agousernameis42

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