Recommend me a Radio Station to listen to at work

Classic FM

or if you are Asian then BBC Asian

I quite like listening to Radio X, personally.

BBC Radio 1 is quite cool (though not to everyone's taste, and kind of the same if you listen to it on consecutive days), I like The Matt Edmondson show in particular if he's on, and Clara Amfo has such a soothing voice

For the best part of next week, I have a completely empty office! Since I can't work in silence and I now have control of the office radio, recommend me a decent Radio Station to listen to!

My working hours are generally 8am to 4pm, so if there're decent shows on at specific times, I'm willing to switch during the day.

I prefer nothing distracting and should be easy to listen to (so no heavy metal, dance music or the likes) as I still want to be productive, but I'm open to any suggestions as to whether the station plays music, has adverts or not, or is a discussion/story station.

What does everyone tend to listen to?

For the best part of next week, I have a completely empty office! Since I can't work in silence and I now have control of the office radio, recommend me a decent Radio Station to listen to!

My working hours are generally 8am to 4pm, so if there're decent shows on at specific times, I'm willing to switch during the day.

I prefer nothing distracting and should be easy to listen to (so no heavy metal, dance music or the likes) as I still want to be productive, but I'm open to any suggestions as to whether the station plays music, has adverts or not, or is a discussion/story station.

What does everyone tend to listen to?

i usually listen to heart in the car though purely because I like the music (mix of 80s90s00s and current). They do play a lot of the same thing though. I think the slogan "more music variety" comes from the fact that they play music from nearly 5 different decades. Heart also have great competitions like the current one "who's on heart" where three secret celebrities are saying one of the words "who's" "on" and "heart" and people phone in every hour and try and guess the celebrities to win money. This competition goes on for months until all celebrities are guessed. So far one has been guessed.

The downside to stations like heart is the ads but there are local heart stations and you can get news relevant to your area which is quite nice. Oh and on Sunday mornings it's Emma Willis and Stephen Mulhern and they have good on air chemistry and regular features like catchphrase for the radio.

I don't really listen to radio 1 or 3. But radio 4 is good in the morning ie the today show - makes you aware of the current news and the presenters are witty.

Finally Gold is good but that's on AM not FM so poor quality but if you like old music like me (70s Rock) then give it a listen.

I think that is everything.

I used to listen to Heart quite a lot, it's my local station, but I tuned out after a couple of things I found:

1) "More Music Variety" - must be because they play different decades of music, other than that, I didn't actually hear the "variety" as the songs that they played never seemed to change; additionally they didn't put much new music onto their playout system. I found out that Capital FM played a lot more new music, but unfortunately Capital on FM is pretty weak in my area so it's a case of fire up Tunein (on the computer), fire up the DAB radio (and put up with poorer quality sound), try and get the best possible Capital FM signal, or put up with Heart,

2) Awful hacking of songs - as of 2012/2013 I noticed that quite a few songs seemed to have the ends chopped off quite regularly - why they did this, I do not know. Its very annoying when you're just getting into a song, and someone cuts it short, to try and squeeze an extra song (or two) into the hourly schedule. Some times, I found out that over a minute had been cut off, sometimes even longer (see relevant thread). Also, most of their in-house radio edits of songs are not that great, removing every last ounce of rap to make the song as friendly as possible. A couple of examples being Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling (that song was butchered!) and Pitbull ft Neyo - Give Me Everything (they redone it so that all you heard was Ne-Yo's choruses).

3) Who's On Heart was great when it first launched but the problem was that they were still plugging away at it after 8 months, during the first season of Who's On Heart (2012). And when you've heard Who's On Heart (WOH) every day for the past few months, it gets very tedious! And that was just the first year; if my memory serves me correctly, they had a WOH 2012, WOH 2013, WOH 2014, possibly a WOH 2015 (though during 2014 and 2015, I listened to other stations) and I heard an episode of WOH 2016 whilst doing an FM Radio test on board a train. So 5 years of WOH now.

Due to the reasons above, in late 2013/early 2014, I switched to a different selection of stations: Capital FM (for the new music), Kiss FM (for new music/dance music - also for when I was outside of a Capital FM area) and Demon FM - the latter being my university's' radio station and playing a great selection of music. My only regret? I wish I'd switched to Capital/Kiss a lot sooner, as I'd have been even happier listening to nice modern pop/dance/chart music.

If you want the sort of music that heart is likely to provide, then why not give Magic or Smooth a try? If you want real old classics, try Gold. You could also try a station called Gem 106, which used to be Heart for East Midlands, and as such retains most of the Heart playlist of songs (whilst being a bit more adventurous!) whilst also feeling more local.

I used to listen to Radio 1 sometimes, but didn't think much of it, so kept with Heart/Capital/Kiss; Radio 3 is not my sort of music (and nor is Classic FM, which does similar music to R3) and Radio 4 (being a talk station) is not for me, as I like to have music on the radio.

With regards to the poor quality; the OP will be using a computer/laptop so that shouldn't be an issue.
Hope I've covered everything

I agree with the stuff about heart and the lack of variety, I feel like certain songs get played at least once every day for about a week. "Jar of hearts" "uptown funk" and it seems "7 years" is following this trend. I understand that artists have their hits but it would be nice to hear a bit more variety in songs - play some of the lesser known ones and their slogan would make more sense!

I have also noticed when they play Queen it is usually always Radio Gaga (my least favourite Queen song!). They had so many hits why go for the same one all the time. They definitely need to update their playlist!

Re WOH I didn't realise it had been going on for so long! I only really started listening to heart in 2013 in the summer. I suppose it is popular with the listeners ie lots of people phone in. It's quite a hard competition so it can drag I agree and then eventually they need to give hints on the website. They normally do a list of incorrect guesses and they haven't done that this year, it would be a good idea because it's such a waste of time when people phone in and guess a celeb who has already been mentioned loads! I think it's one of those competitions you get hooked on. I always pay extra attention or turn up the volume when it gets to that time and someone has to guess a name, plus the prize money is pretty good as far as radio competitions go.

I have tried listening to Capital and Kiss but I find the music on capital to be too new if you get me. I am not an avid listener to music and don't care much for keeping up to date with the new hits. This probably sounds very naive but I always just assume if a song is good enough that it becomes popular it will probably end up being played (albeit to death) on heart. Overall though I prefer music the way it was in the 70s (even though I am 20!) and some of the new stuff sounds way too synthesised. This is one of the main reasons I dislike Kiss, also I find the remixes annoying.

I might try magic and smooth, plus gem106. What would you say were the main differences between them particularly the first two?

I really like gold. I enjoy music from so many eras haha! I enjoy radio, I volunteer at a hospital radio once a week in London and because it's a patient request show the music we play most often tends to be classical. Maybe that's why I don't like radio three! Sick to death of Mozart.