Internet radio from Bristol, UKIndie · Pop · Rock · Electronic · 256kbps
How CruiseOne works, and what changed when: the stream, the sound, the player and the website. For the curious. RSS feed
Player
The full-screen player, the pop-out and the app now say which program is up next. It shares one quiet line with Missed a program? Listen again: every 15 seconds one fades out and the other in, slowly. In the last 10 minutes before a program it just counts down: Coming up in 8 min.
Slightly cleaner sound but maybe not quite as loud.
Website
Recently played shows the last 8 songs and Later today the next 4 programs, so both columns end level and the page is shorter, especially on a phone. The rest is a click away: What Was That Song? and Programs.
Player
Install the pop-out player (the icon at the end of its address bar in Chrome, Edge or Vivaldi, or File > Add to Dock in Safari) and it becomes an app of its own: no address bar, no browser tab needed, and macOS's Now Playing and your keyboard's play key work with it.
Website
Ways to Listen lists the directories that carry the station as a row of buttons: radio.net, Streema, Internet Radio, LiveRadio UK and Ireland, Online Radio Box and the Icecast directory.
Website
The home page has On this day: a year from the last 50, its UK number one and a headline from Wikipedia. Every song has a heart (anonymous, once per song per browser), the Music page has Most loved this week, and Share gives a song a page of its own.
Player
On a computer, the small button at the end of the player bar opens the player in a window of its own, which plays on when you close the site's tab. It takes over what the tab was playing, rewound place and all, with no gap and never two streams at once.
Website
The Contact page has a form of its own: messages are kept for 90 days and your email is used only to reply. And the whole site can be installed as an app on a phone or computer (Ways to Listen says how).
Music
Each genre card on the Music page shows four covers of its songs played in the six hours before, picked again at midnight, 6:00, 12:00 and 18:00. Each one opens the song's card.
Player
In a program with rewind on, or a Listen Again episode, round buttons either side of Play skip back or forward 30 seconds. Forward goes back to live once you're within 20 seconds of it.
Website
After about 14 years of gold on black: light, the station's red and one typeface, Archivo, at real weights and widths, with Recently played as a chart rundown. The song's colour stays in the player. The new logo followed the same evening.
Stream
Some office networks (Zscaler, for one) scan every download before passing it on, and a live stream never finishes downloading. Where the stream hasn't started within 6 seconds, the player now plays live from the server's copy in 10-second pieces, which those networks let through.
Player
While live plays, the title changes when the song does in your ears, not 10 seconds early, and the hourly station ID (on air for about 8 seconds) now always shows. The player checks every 3 seconds and holds each title back by the stream's delay.
Website
News became a timeline by month. Posts are made of blocks (songs, programs, Listen again buttons, pictures), and each week the songs played on CruiseOne for the first time get an entry of their own.
Programs
A new Programs page, as a roller: on now in the middle, what's been on above and what's coming below, in your own time. Listen Again says when each program is next on and what played in it, with a link to share an episode.
Player
Songs that neither iTunes nor Deezer has now get their sleeve from MusicBrainz and the Cover Art Archive, matched strictly: a missing cover is better than a wrong one.
Player
On a locked phone, the title and cover on the lock screen now follow the songs while the player is on, instead of waiting until you open the browser again.
Stream
A new listener now gets 10 seconds of audio straight away (Icecast's burst on connect), so Chrome starts in about half a second and Safari in under a second, where they used to wait 3 to 7. Everyone hears the same moment, and the hourly ID still lands on the hour.
Programs
Programs can be kept after they end, on the Listen Again page, for between 6 hours and 14 days. An episode is the same 10-second pieces as rewind, hard-linked on the server, so keeping one copies nothing.
Programs
During a program with rewind on, you can scrub back to its start, Restart it, and go back to live. It plays from a copy the server keeps of the last hours of the stream, cut into 10-second pieces (HLS) with the 256k MP3 untouched. Outside programs it's live only: radio, not Spotify.
Website
Every song in Recently played opens a card: its cover, album and year, when it played, and a sentence or two from its Wikipedia article, credited and linked. A day later: a link to search Genius when Wikipedia has nothing.
Player
Tap the cover or title in the player bar and the song on air opens big, with its album and 32 bars of visualiser. The player takes its colour from the cover on air, and its bars follow the music itself, bass to treble (Chrome, Edge and Android; a gentle stand-in elsewhere).
Player
Every song gets its cover, looked up on iTunes and then Deezer, never a compilation or soundtrack, so it's the song's own sleeve. Until one is found, a tile coloured from the artist's name.
Website
Ways to Listen has the playlist files for VLC, Apple Music and other players, and both stream addresses: HTTPS, and plain HTTP on port 8000 for older internet radios. What Was That Song? finds any song by day and time.