dublabdublab

dublab started in 1999 as an internet-only station run by Jonathan Buck, Mark McNeill and a handful of friends who had met at USC's college station — the name is dubbing plus laboratory, which was very much the point. Streaming radio was still a curiosity then, and the station kept at it long enough for the rest of Los Angeles to catch up. A non-profit umbrella, Future Roots Inc., took over the operation in 2008, and affiliate stations now run in Cologne, Tokyo, Barcelona and São Paulo.

DJs choose everything they play, which is why an afternoon slides from drone to thrift-store psych to beat-scene hip-hop without comment. Tonalism, the station's all-night ambient series, and the Sprout Sessions recorded in its own studio both turn into releases. For Secondhand Sureshots it handed producers five dollars each and told them to sample what they found.