Generative ambient radio, live from the blockchain.
Every block staked on Gridcoin is compiled into a piece of ambient music, from nothing but its hash. The station has been composing since 2013. Nobody had tuned in until now.
Dead air
The station hasn’t heard a block yet. Stand by; the next one is rarely more than a couple of minutes out.
How a block becomes a broadcast
There is no playlist and nobody choosing. Consensus writes the score; the station plays it once, for everyone.
1 · Stake
Somewhere on the network a wallet stakes a block, roughly every 90 seconds, as it has since 2013. Its hash is 32 bytes nobody chose and nobody can predict: the one honest composer.
2 · Compile
A few bytes have fixed jobs: the key, one of nine scales, the tempo, the form, the title. The rest is drawn from the hash in a fixed order: which of eight pieces the block plays, its chords, and who plays it, from fifteen lead seats, thirteen of them real recorded instruments. Frozen as gridradio:v1, so the same hash plays the same tune forever.
3 · Play
The station performs each block once and keeps the recording, so every listener hears the same file, sample for sample. A new block is performed as soon as it is staked; any block can be downloaded as an MP3. The station keeps a like count and a play count per block, with nothing about who left them. Every block is a new tune, and new blocks never stop coming.
Science is Music
On this station that is literal. Every artist got here the same way: by computing for science. Gridcoin pays volunteers for real research through BOINC, from folding proteins to mapping the Milky Way. Earn GRC by crunching, and when your wallet stakes a block, the station plays a tune only that block could write. It stays in the archive forever. There is no other way onto the stage.
Start computing →Made with ❤ by @gridcat · Part of Gridcoin Club ↗