FM.313.cash

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## Inspiration

Vice Media promoted a “Project Playlist,” but summer was almost over and there still was not something tangible we could use. We wanted to fill that void by building something special: a strange, independent radio station where human- made music, local information, and generative media infrastructure become one continuous broadcast.

## What it does

FM.313.CASH (https://fm.313.cash) is an open media index with a live station called LONGPLAY. It arranges creator-published tracks into 10–15 minute sets, adds generated DJ intros and recaps, and opens with current Detroit weather, a timely news headline, and a playful question about the next song’s lyrics—without reproducing them.

The platform also supports direct-to-artist tipping, helping listeners reward creators without a traditional media middleman.

## How we built it

We built LONGPLAY as a duration-aware Rails broadcast engine. It plans each station cycle, selects voice personalities, and sends approved scripts through a real Genblaze pipeline using local text-to-speech. Every generated script, audio asset, quality-gate result, manifest, checksum, and provenance record is stored durably in Backblaze B2 before it can air.

Codex and GPT-5.6 helped us design, implement, test, secure, and debug the system under a real deadline.

## Challenges we ran into

The hardest problem was making generative media behave like dependable radio. Speech had to land at the correct musical boundaries, failed voice renders could not interrupt the station, and incomplete programs could never leak onto the live stream. We solved this with bounded quality gates, immutable receipts, verified B2 downloads, retries, and atomic program activation.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a working public station—not a slideshow or mockup. LONGPLAY can create coherent 10–15 minute sets, incorporate live context, reject bad audio, preserve generation history in B2, and keep broadcasting its last verified program while the next one is being produced.

## What we learned

Generative media is not only about generating an asset. The orchestration, provenance, storage, timing, recovery, and listener experience are what turn generation into a product. B2 became part of the broadcast’s chain of trust, not merely a backup destination.

## What's next for FM.313.CASH

Next we want LONGPLAY to support more independent stations, listener requests, artist-controlled programming, richer local bulletins, and additional Genblaze media providers. Our larger goal is an open radio network where creators can publish, program, and preserve their own culture without waiting for a traditional gatekeeper.