Learn the story behind every song while you listen

The easiest way to learn music history is to hear it at the moment it matters: a short story about a song, told right before that song starts. That's what Stationz.fm does on YouTube. A DJ introduces each song with a checked fact about it, its album or the people who made it, and never tells you the same fact twice while it still has new ones.

Below is how the facts are gathered and checked, how to choose how much you hear, and six real stories from our artist research, with their sources.

Where the stories come from

Stationz doesn't rely on an AI's memory for its stories. Language models are fluent, and fluent is not the same as right. Instead, the DJ works from two layers of research:

• A music facts library. Short facts about songs, albums, artists and band members, pulled from Wikipedia and MusicBrainz. Before any page is used, the match is checked, because the wrong Wikipedia page means wrong facts, and a miss is better than a mistake. Songs that aren't in the library yet are queued to be researched. The 25 ready-made stations are researched ahead of time.
• Deep artist stories. For around 200 well-known artists, there's a long researched dossier: how they started, the records, the people around them, the rare details, and the dark chapters too. Every story lists its sources.

When the DJ writes an intro for a song with checked facts, it's given a few of them and told to use only those: no extra names, dates or numbers. If it isn't sure which song is playing, it's told to state no facts at all. You can read more about that pipeline in How an AI radio DJ works.

It doesn't repeat itself

The library remembers which facts you've already heard. Next time the song comes around, the DJ reaches for a different fact, about the song, the album, the artist or someone in the band, until it runs out of new ones for that song. Each intro is also compared with the last few for that song, and rewritten if it's too similar. Playing the same playlist for a month is how you learn the most.

Disputed stories are flagged

Music history is full of stories that everyone repeats and nobody can prove. Our research keeps those, because they're often the best ones, but marks them as disputed and gives the competing versions instead of presenting a legend as fact. You'll see that in the examples below and on the artist pages. Some stories also touch on loss or tragedy, and when one of those comes up in an intro, the DJ is told to tell it gently: a calm voice, no jokes, no hype.

Choose how much you learn

How many facts you hear depends on the talk level:

On Pro, the Nerdy and Academic tones lean further into details. If you're working and want less talk, Minimal keeps it to a few seconds (see Background music for work).

Six stories from our research

These come straight from the artist dossiers the DJ draws on, with their sources.

a-ha: a chewing gum jingle and a Boston TV station

The verse melody of Take On Me was partly inspired by a Juicy Fruit chewing gum advert: Morten Harket said the tune reminded him of a gum jingle (The Guardian, Wikipedia). The song's first British release in 1984 peaked at number 137. When the famous pencil sketch video came along, it was first shown on V66, a local Boston music channel, before MTV gave it heavy rotation and the single went to number one in America (Wikipedia: Hunting High and Low). More on the a-ha artist page.

Dire Straits: the reporter who wrote Hendrix's obituary

Before Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler was a young reporter in Leeds. In September 1970 he wrote Jimi Hendrix's obituary for the Yorkshire Evening Post, because he was the only person in the office young enough to know who Hendrix was (Louder). The band's first demo, the one with Sultans of Swing on it, was paid for with 500 pounds John Illsley inherited from his grandmother (same source, and Wikipedia).

Disputed: were they really in dire straits? Illsley remembers living on next to nothing. David Knopfler has called that largely retrospective myth making, since they all had day jobs, and accounts even differ on who came up with the name (Wikipedia, Wikipedia: David Knopfler). See the Dire Straits page.

Queen: the seventh bassist who wasn't

A story fans repeated for years says Queen auditioned bassist after bassist and John Deacon was the seventh. It isn't true. Before John, Queen had three bassists: Mike Grose, Barry Mitchell and Doug Bogie, who played only two gigs. John was the fourth, introduced to Brian May and Roger Taylor by a friend at a disco in early 1971 (Wikipedia: John Deacon, Wikipedia: Queen, MusicBrainz). More on the Queen page.

ABBA: a TV debut on the day Sweden changed sides of the road

Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Frida, won a talent contest on the third of September 1967 and sang that night on Sweden's biggest TV show. It was the day Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right. Driving was discouraged, so most of the country was at home watching (Wikipedia: Anni-Frid Lyngstad).

Disputed: nobody has ever officially confirmed which letter of ABBA belongs to which member, or why the order runs that way. The name was partly a joke by manager Stig Anderson, since Abba was also a Swedish brand of canned fish (Wikipedia). See the ABBA page.

Daft Punk: hiding under the table

At Daft Punk's first ever show, in Marseille in the mid nineties, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo was so scared he hid under the table for much of the set, as Thomas Bangalter told BBC Radio 6 Music (Mixmag). Their debut album, Homework, was recorded in Thomas's bedroom in Paris, and he had to move his bed out to make room for the equipment (Wikipedia: Thomas Bangalter, Wikipedia: Homework).

Disputed: the duo took their name from a Melody Maker review of their earlier band. Most accounts quote it as "a daft punky thrash", but The Guardian's write-up of the documentary Daft Punk Unchained quotes it as "daft punky trash", a harsher insult (Wikipedia, The Guardian). See the Daft Punk page.

Bob Marley: BMW, for Bob Marley and the Wailers

Bob Marley owned two BMWs and said he chose the brand because BMW stood for Bob Marley and the Wailers. He was also a lifelong football fan who supported Tottenham Hotspur and Santos (Wikipedia).

Disputed: for years it was said his cancer started with a toe injury in a football match, and his official biography still links the two. Medical writers point out that the kind of melanoma he had isn't caused by injury, and the football knock most likely just drew attention to it (Wikipedia, bobmarley.com, Hektoen International). See the Bob Marley page.

FAQ

Where do the DJ's song facts come from?

From a music facts library built from Wikipedia and MusicBrainz, plus researched artist stories that list their sources. When the DJ has checked facts for a song, it's told to use only those and not to add its own.

Will I hear the same fact twice?

Not while there are new ones. The DJ remembers which facts you've heard and picks fresh ones, about the song, the album, the artist or the band members.

What if a song isn't in the library?

It gets queued for research. Until it's ready, the DJ can still use checked facts about the artist when the artist is in the library, and otherwise keeps the intro simpler.

Can I get more stories and less chat, or the other way round?

Yes. Balanced gives one short fact per song, Talkative (Pro) gives fuller stories, and Minimal just names the song and the artist.