Please recommend some 24/7 classical music internet radio streams that never feature Fred Child.

November 19, 2008 6:35 AM

Please recommend some 24/7 classical music internet radio streams that never feature Fred Child.

Not his fault, but his voice goes into my ear and takes a shortcut to the irrational anger center of my brain. I like to code while having some classical music on, and ideally some regional American voices occasionally describing what I just heard, but I don't really care for the generic US "cultured" media accent that sounds like a combination between a Californian with strange diction, a gram of soma, and a smiling baby. In the last couple of weeks I was listening to the WGBH HD radio stream, when he came on, at which point I switched to Minnesota Public Radio, which slightly later on ran a Fred Child segment, at which point I found another station, with the predictable outcome the next day. There seems to be some kind of broadcast franchise situation there which I'm guessing is NPR-related.

So, please recommend some classical music streams to me, best case scenario a 24/7 radio station with actual radio-voice-having DJs, US regional accents a plus. If the assertion that there are US regional accents or that someone would enjoy them makes you feel an exciting urge to speak you're branes, skip this one!

Thanks for your recommendations!

posted by Your Time Machine Sucks to media & arts (23 comments total)

Pandora has classical music now. Works great for me.
posted by Perplexity at 6:38 AM on November 19, 2008

But there're no people there.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 6:40 AM on November 19, 2008

Have you tried AccuRadio? It doesn't have the regional accents you're looking for; as far as I can remember it's just plain music, but I haven't listened to it in years so I can't really vouch for it. Might be worth looking at.
posted by creasy boy at 6:42 AM on November 19, 2008

Oh, I see you insist upon the people being there. Sorry, ignore my answer.
posted by creasy boy at 6:43 AM on November 19, 2008

LastFM will allow you to play classical music like this. It does not allow you to ban an artist outright - but if you ban tracks by a particular artist who you do not like - it will get the idea pretty soon.
posted by rongorongo at 6:49 AM on November 19, 2008

OK, looking for deejayed US radio stations with streams that do not feature Fred Childs as a radio personality; I'm aware of the existence of streams which can be filtered by genre.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 7:03 AM on November 19, 2008

We enjoying listening to NRK Klassik on our Sonos system. It's a Norwegian classical station. Features real DJs but I don't understand a word of Norwegian, so no idea what they're saying. They don't talk much but program well.
posted by Nelson at 7:38 AM on November 19, 2008

How about Live365?
posted by ottereroticist at 7:38 AM on November 19, 2008

I'm pretty sure 1.fm uses real DJs and they even have two classical stations depending on what you like.
One
Two
posted by DJWeezy at 8:17 AM on November 19, 2008

You can try WQED, the classical music station for Pittsburgh. I assume that the stream is the same as the over-the-air broadcast.
posted by dforemsky at 8:22 AM on November 19, 2008

You're hearing Fred Child everywhere because he's a host of a show, Performance Today, that's carried on a bunch of classical public radio stations. It's like hearing Ira Glass everywhere because he's carried everywhere. Probably the easiest solution is to pick a station you like, find out when Performance Today plays on that station, pick your second favorite station that plays PT at a different time, and switch over to that second station for the two hours PT is on the first station.

Here's the list of stations that carry PT and when.
posted by ochenk at 8:34 AM on November 19, 2008

sky.fm - scroll down to the classical channel, then play. They have about 50 different genre focused stations. No ads beyond station idents.
posted by wackybrit at 8:47 AM on November 19, 2008

AllClassical (Portland)

I've never paid attention to the DJs, so I don't know if they're what you're looking for or not. But it's a good classical radio station.
posted by Jaltcoh at 9:19 AM on November 19, 2008

How about WQXR? Since they're commercial, I don't think they carry any of the PRI programming that Child does.
posted by Jahaza at 9:49 AM on November 19, 2008

I listen to allclassical (over the air) all the time and I like it a lot, but it might not be the one since (a) it airs PT, (b) has a Portland tie to Fred Child increasing the likelihood of a random encounter with him and (c) its weekend afternoon DJ is English.
posted by turbodog at 11:15 AM on November 19, 2008

I've listened to the streaming audio on KING.org for years, and have no idea who Fred Child is, so that's probably a good sign you won't run into him there.

To my ears, whoever selects their playlist does a great job of balancing baroque/classical/romantic/modern, etc.; the only downside for you might be that it broadcasts out of Seattle, where, if a regional American accent exists, I'm pretty sure it has yet to be identified.
posted by Olden_Bittermann at 11:49 AM on November 19, 2008

Have you tried WFMT out of Chicago? I don't see any mention of Fred Child on their website, but it's been a long time since I've listened.
posted by yellowbkpk at 12:36 PM on November 19, 2008

WCPE in Nawth Carolina, at theclassicalstation.org - you'll catch a southern accent every now and again.
posted by DandyRandy at 1:55 PM on November 19, 2008

WNYC2 is WNYC's internet-only 24/7 classical stream. It's pretty solid, with more contemporary music than usual (a bonus if you ask me). I don't think Fred Child is involved, though I never paid much attention.
posted by speicus at 12:31 AM on November 20, 2008

Wow, thank you very much folks, there are a lot of good recommendations here and it's going to take me a while to try them out and sort through. A couple of high-quality suggestions have been ruled out for the (subjective and unfair) reasons that I don't love their programming or their stream isn't compatible with my preferred listening software or encoded at a lower bitrate than I prefer, but I think they fit the bill as good answers, so I'm going to mark everything as a best answer that is a US deejayed Child-free station (plus ochenk's helpful list link) and come back and give some feedback on which ones were my subjective favorites.

In the winners so far, WCPE is hopeful, WRTI too, and WNYC2 is a close contender although they program a lot of challenging 20th-century pieces during the scheduling slots in which I listen (I'm overseas), which requires more attention than I can give while programming, although I respect that and would listen to them when I'm not working. Another one I found recently is WHRO, which also seems to fit the bill and is in Virginia. Thanks again!
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 6:31 AM on November 20, 2008

WFMT is another good one so far! BTW, if you made a relevant recommendation and it isn't marked, it's because the radio station site has technical issues with their stream so I can't give them a try, or requires proprietary software to be added to my browser in order to check them out, or because it's a station which runs Performance Today – sorry 'bout that.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 6:48 AM on November 20, 2008

Whoops, scratch what I said about WHRO – I somehow overlooked that they were on the blacklist and just now found myself sitting there in horror as the voice of FC unexpectedly started burbling out of my speakers. It's down to WCPE v. WFMT v. WRTI.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 8:51 AM on November 20, 2008

OK, after about a week of living with the four possibilities, the best is definitely WCPE, which is always on, has good programming which is coding-compatible without slipping into the classical music equivalent of smooth jazz, runs no ads, and has DJs with diverse voices who describe and comment without blathering on. The runner up was WRTI with somewhat more challenging programming and some ads and sometimes a little blather, and WFMT which occasionally edged into rootless smarm and had a lot of ads. I'd listen to any of the three but I find I can leave iTunes on WCPE for days at a time. WNYC 2 definitely made the grade in every respect, but their extra-interesting playlist unfortunately made them too interesting to work along with.

Thanks very much everyone, and special thanks to DandyRandy for recommending WCPE!
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 4:28 AM on November 26, 2008