spinzester exists as a fan tribute to the website spinitron.com. Spinitron allows “non-commercial community and educational radio stations” (think left-of-the-dial eccentricity) to log playlists. These are used for stations’ royalty reporting requirements and to provide Now Playing lists and show archives on their websites.

Spinitron also provides a database of “spins” from 350+ non-commercial radio stations. They compile weekly Top 100 Charts from this data and make the database available for public search.

Spinitron’s customers are radio stations who use the management software, and artists, promoters, and record labels who use the database.

What’s in it for you as a music listener? Nothing short of traveling through space and time from the comfort of your couch. Experience the playlist from a Saturday night jazz show on WWOZ 90.7 New Orleans. Catch Local Rap Lunch weekdays on WKNC 88.1 Raleigh (NC State’s student station). Or Bluegrass Saturday Morning on KBEM 88.5 Minneapolis.

How is this different from all the apps and websites that let you listen to radio stations from around the world? Spinitron is all about playlists. The site allows local station websites to have playlist pages for all their programs and a calendar that lets listeners see their programming schedule.

Let’s start with the home page. RECENT SPINS jumps out at you — a live view of the data going into the Spinitron database. A DJ somewhere just played that song. Where? Station call letters are on the left of the song info. See something you like or that piques your curiosity? Click the link to go to the playlist containing that song.

On many pages you will also be able to access playlists from past episodes and see what other programs are available on that station.

So, what does spinzester add to this? If you browse spinitron.com for very long, you will find the navigation is a bit quirky. The playlist pages are primarily intended to be embedded in radio station websites, so going from one to another or using the back button can be a little confusing.

However, the main thing is that you can play a 30-second preview of any song, but that’s it. You will likely run into playlists you think are very cool, but you can’t really listen to them or save them.

spinzester stays true to the quirky vibe of spinitron.com but allows you to:

• easily navigate back and forth among playlists
• play full songs using your Apple Music account
• save a playlist to Apple Music or Qobuz

Along the way, it fixes minor issues to make your overall browsing and music discovery process smoother and more enjoyable.