NTS Radio streams eclectic, freeform DJ sets and specialist shows spanning virtually every genre, broadcasting live from its famously tiny studio in Dalston, East London. Stream it live and free right now on Radio Shuffle, no account or app required.
Built on five thousand pounds and a blog about soup
NTS Radio's origin story is almost absurdly modest for a station now described by The Guardian as redefining radio and by The New Yorker as having reshaped how musicians and fans worldwide see and hear each other. Founder Femi Adeyemi launched it in 2011 after being made redundant, turning his personal music blog Nuts To Soup into an online station on a budget of roughly £5,000. His inspirations were specific and unglamorous: pirate radio, MTV2, American college radio stations like WFMU, and the creative community built around the legendary London club Plastic People.
Still broadcasting from the same tiny shack
NTS operated out of a small glass-fronted studio in Gillett Square, Dalston, from the very beginning, and, remarkably, still does. Adeyemi and co-founder McAuliffe formally incorporated NTS Live Ltd in 2013, bringing on early volunteers Shane Connelly, Fergus McDonald, Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura and Padraigh Perkins Edge as the station's first actual employees. The physical home never moved even as the station's reach went global, a detail that keeps NTS feeling like a community project rather than a corporate platform, no matter how many listeners tune in from outside London.
Freeform as a genuine editorial choice
What separates NTS from a typical online radio aggregator is total creative control for its presenters. Shows span genres with no obligation to fit a format, from rare dance music and jazz to experimental sound art and extended DJ sets that run far longer than commercial radio would ever allow. That freedom is the entire pitch, a direct descendant of the pirate radio ethos Adeyemi cited as his original inspiration.
A tiny shack with global reach
NTS Radio's path from a redundancy payout and a personal blog to international press recognition says something about what genuinely independent radio can still become in the internet era: not a format decision made by committee, but one person's specific taste, protected and expanded over more than a decade, broadcasting from the same small square in Dalston it started in.
Stream NTS Radio free on Radio Shuffle, anywhere, any time, with no sign-up required.