From Frustration with News to an AI Radio Startup (with Full Stack Breakdown)

At some point, I wanted to dive into Kubernetes and mobile development, but I wasn’t sure where to begin. At the same time, I was deeply frustrated by the lack of news free from political agendas and negativity. The internet felt flooded with manipulative content, and I found myself wishing for a filter that could cut through all the noise.

Eventually, I started by creating my own AI-powered online radio that broadcasts copyright-free music and what I consider “clean” news — free from bias and negativity. Later, when people began reaching out, asking how to create their own internet radio stations, I decided to focus my efforts on building a full-fledged platform with AI hosts, podcasts, and an intuitive management system.

I ended up calling the project Tunio, from “tune” and “I/O”, but happy to hear if it evokes something else to you.

Streams that demonstrate the overall result

• Tunio Showcase - News, podcasts, announcement, host, jingles
• Tunio – Lounge - Only music with jingles
• Tunio – Post-Apocalyptic Dark Ambient (featuring an ambient rain layer)

Quick breakdown of the stack I used

Stack Overview (Kubernetes-based):

• Audio: Icecast2, Liquidsoap
• Logic: Golang (real-time playlist management and background conversion jobs)
• Storage: PostgreSQL (pgvector), S3
• Processing: ffmpeg for news and podcasts — used for normalization and preparing all audio files before streaming.
• Monitoring: Prometheus + Grafana
• TTS: ElevenLabs, Piper TTS (self-hosted)
• Frontend: Next.js, React Native (Expo)

TTS / Audio Generation

Originally used ElevenLabs, but later started using self-hosted Piper TTS to avoid high costs in the early stages of the project and to stay unlimited in content generation.

News and podcasts are generated from RSS → filtered from negativity, politics, ads, and promotions using AI models → deduplicated with vector embeddings → summarized using GPT → voiced → sent to the live stream.

Content

• All music is copyright-free, generated or licensed via open models
• News is categorized (tech, sports, gaming, etc.) and updated frequently from RSS-feeds
• Jingles are also generated using TTS, with voices provided by ElevenLabs.
• Podcasts are generated based on user prompts, voiced by the selected TTS provider, and sent to the broadcast.

Frontend

• Next.js with next-intl for i18n for application and control panel
• React Native (Expo) app with WebView for mobile access

Distribution

Built-in restreaming to YouTube, Twitch, and Telegram directly from the platform — no third-party software needed.

I’ve set up a few demo stations to test different use cases (lounge, ambient, etc.) — would be curious to hear what you think: https://app.tunio.ai

I’m not able to fully onboard users yet, as the company registration process is still underway and I can’t accept payments at this stage — but the platform is open for testing.

If anyone’s interested, I’d be happy to share my story — the mistakes I made early on and how I had to rethink and redo some of the initial decisions.

Feedback of any kind is welcome — tech suggestions, naming thoughts, or just impressions!