I am enjoying listening to live and archived shows out of n10.as radio in Montreal (n10.as = “antennas”; get it?). Musically speaking, the station is roughly comparable to an online stream just started in Brooklyn called The Lot Radio. But while The Lot’s main draw is its Williamsburg storage compartment live studio, n10.as’s attraction, at least to me, is its command line web interface.
For example, while listening to the live show “brunch club,” you just login on the main page and the next thing you know you’re gossiping with other listeners and the hosts about Tia Tequila and Ben Higgins or whoever:
You can also find out more about the station via a set of line commands:
I really love radio stations that offer command line chat interfaces. There’s something quick and easy about it. I feel much more connected to the broadcast chatting on a web command line portal than I do trying to interface via Twitter or Facebook.
Thump, Vice’s electronic and culture news blog, has a nice profile of n10.as. A group of students, some (but not all) affiliated with Concordia University, run the station out of the HQ of Arbutus Records.
“We wanted to be aware of different subcultures and try to touch upon everybody,” one told Thump. “Right from the beginning, you have to setup a groundwork where people feel welcome.” So far it seems to be working.
