You are not publishing a playlist. You are running a station on a live network, and that comes with a frequency, a call sign, a programming schedule, and a room listeners walk into. This manual is the whole job in one place. Each section links to the deep dive when there is one.
What the network is
AetherWave Radio is a synced broadcast network. Every station is locked to a wall clock, so every listener anywhere in the world hears the same song at the same second. Nobody gets their own private shuffle. Miss the intro and it is gone, exactly like real radio.
That single fact drives most of the advice below. You are programming a schedule, not filling a queue.
Your station's two addresses
Every station has a permanent public page:
https://aetherwavestudio.com/radio/<your-share-code>
That is the link to share. It is what the Share button and the API both hand you.
Your station also appears in two browse surfaces automatically:
- The Radio Network - the mosaic. Favourites, the flagship, and Discover.
- The Radio Directory - the full network grouped into genre lanes with live now-playing.
You do not submit anything to be listed. Public stations appear on their own.
On the dial, or in the directory
Two kinds of station, and it is worth knowing which you are:
- Dial stations hold a permanent FM frequency between 88.1 and 108.8 and carry a four-letter call sign that AetherWave issues, the way a broadcast authority licenses the airwaves. They are tunable on the Stereo System's FM tuner.
- Directory stations sit off the dial. They still stream, still appear in browse, and still have a full station page. On a station stereo they show a digital name readout instead of a dial position, the way satellite radio carries channels that were never going to fit on a dial.
Frequencies are finite and assigned by AetherWave. A new station starts in the directory. Being off the dial costs you nothing in reach: browse, search, and your public link all work the same.
Setting up
Covered step by step in Create a Broadcast Station: naming, description, cover art, genre tag, visibility, and your plan's station limit.
Two things worth extra care, because they are what people see first:
- Cover art is your thumbnail everywhere in browse. A dark, low-contrast image disappears in the mosaic.
- Genre tag decides which lane you land in on the directory. Related genres are grouped, so "House" and "Techno" both land in Electronic / EDM.
Manage everything from My Stations.
Filling the rotation
Add tracks from your own gallery, the community library, or the AetherWave pool. Stations play in order and loop at the end.
- At least 10 tracks before you share it. Below that, listeners hear the loop.
- Genre stations self-populate. If your station is a curated genre station, radio-ready community tracks matching its sound flow in automatically.
- Keep adding. A rotation that never changes stops earning repeat listens.
Programming the clock
This is the part that makes it a station instead of a playlist, and it has its own article: Station Breaks, Ad Spots, and the Clock.
The essentials:
- You can schedule station IDs, ad spots, breaks, and full shows from the Show Builder. Full directions: Using the Show Builder.
- Every time on the scheduling page is UTC. This catches everyone once.
One spot per moment
A moment on air belongs to one spot, the way a broadcast traffic log carries one item per slot. The scheduler handles that spacing for you: set a station ID or an ad to a time another spot already holds and it takes the next free one, then tells you where it landed ("Moved to :05 so it does not clash with Station ID").
Repeating spots are spaced in five minute steps through the hour, which gives you twelve places. Spots at set times are spaced by the length of the spot already there. You can rearrange anything yourself at any point with the +5 min button.
So you do not need to keep track of what is booked where. Put a spot where you want it and let the scheduler find it a home if that moment is taken.
Shows take priority
A show has the stream to itself, so a programme is never interrupted part way through. The one thing to plan around is the stretch a show occupies: a spot falling inside a show sits out until its next turn. Know your show's real length, which is the total of its segment audio rather than the Duration label, and keep spots clear of that window.
The short version: spots keep a rhythm, shows take a time, so move the show rather than the spot.
Before you upload any spoken audio, read Preparing Audio for Your Show. Voice recorded at a different level than your music is the single most common reason a station sounds amateur. The fix takes a minute and it matters more on a station than anywhere else, because listeners cannot turn one element down without turning everything down.
Tuning your station's sound
Every station has a Stereo System: a photoreal rack of studio gear you actually operate, knob by knob. What you build is what your listeners hear.
- Open your station's stereo from its public page.
- Seat gear in the rack slots. The free core kit ships with every rack; more is available in the Audio Store.
- Press Save to Radio Station.
Until you save, you are only auditioning. After you save, every visitor to your station hears your rack.
Full detail in Radio Stations and the AI Host and Building Your Rack.
A station with no saved rack plays through the default system. That is a perfectly good sound, so this is optional, not homework.
Dressing the room
Your station stereo sits in a listening room with four framed openings on the wall. As the owner you can hang art in them.
- Open your station's stereo.
- Click any frame.
- Choose Upload an image, or Choose from your gallery.
Uploads accept JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF up to 10MB. Click a filled frame again to replace or remove the art. Empty frames are a finished look, not a broken one, so use as few as you like.
Posters are the cheapest personality you can add: cover art, tour posters, a logo, band photos.
The AI Host
You can give your station an AI host that talks to listeners between songs. Configure its name and personality from the station stereo. See Radio Stations and the AI Host.
Followers and favourites
Two different things, deliberately:
- Following is public and social. It writes to your station's follower count, which shows in the directory.
- Favouriting (the heart in browse) is a private bookmark a listener keeps for themselves. It does not touch your counts.
So a rising favourite count is invisible to you by design. Judge reach by followers and plays.
Growing an audience
- Share the station link, not a track link. The station is the thing people come back to.
- Say what you program. "Cantonese techno from 2am" beats "my music".
- Cross-promote with other station owners in the community feed. The network is small enough that this genuinely works.
- Be on air when you post. Someone clicking a link to a station playing something great converts far better than one that happens to be mid station ID.
A checklist before you call it live
- At least 10 tracks in rotation
- Cover art that reads at thumbnail size
- Genre tag set, so you land in the right lane
- Any spoken audio loudness-checked
- Breaks and shows scheduled in UTC
- Rack saved, if you want your own sound
- Station page opened once as a logged-out listener, to see what strangers see