Most internet radio stations exist because someone loved a format that corporate radio stopped playing. Smooth Jazz and More Radio is a particularly direct example: it was built by a lifelong jazz fan who watched two different smooth jazz stations get pulled out from under him, and decided to stop waiting for a third to disappear.
A Childhood Shaped by WRVR-FM
According to the station's own history page, its founder grew up in Brooklyn in the late 1970s listening to WRVR-FM, a jazz station whose DJs, including Les Davis, gave listeners historical context on Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday between records. When WRVR changed format in 1980, the founder describes being left "heartbroken and angry," an experience that would repeat itself two decades later.
The Final Straw in Syracuse
After arriving in Syracuse in 1996, the founder found Smooth FM CD 106.9, WHCD, a locally owned smooth jazz station. Its sale to Clear Channel in September 2000 and the format change that followed became, in the founder's words, "the final straw." Around the same time, a television segment about the startup Live365 showed how anyone could run a radio station over the internet from home, using their own record collection. Smooth Jazz and More launched that same year, built on the idea of "music without boundaries, no time limits, no consultants," according to the station's history page.
Outlasting Live365 Itself
The bet paid off in an unexpected way. Live365, the platform that made the station possible, shut down in January 2016 after nearly 15 years, done in by rising royalty rates and the loss of investors. Smooth Jazz and More kept broadcasting past its own launchpad's collapse, moving on to other streaming infrastructure and continuing into its 25th anniversary year.
What's Actually Playing
The current lineup includes Sunday-afternoon episodes hosted by Magdalena and Robert, alongside a rotation built around both jazz standards and contemporary smooth jazz artists. A recent track to surface on the station is "Walkin' the Dog" by Nils, the German-American guitarist known for blending smooth jazz with funk and R&B grooves, a good snapshot of the station's mix of classic sensibility and current material.
Why It's Worth Tuning In
Smooth Jazz and More Radio is what happens when a listener refuses to let a format die twice: a station built on a Brooklyn kid's love of WRVR-FM, kept alive through two decades of industry upheaval, still playing jazz "without boundaries."