Radio Balkan

Hey everyone,

After lurking here for a while, I finally shipped my first real product: Radio Balkan (https://radiobalkan.net) — a web player that brings 750+ Balkan radio stations into one place. No ads, no sign-up, no cookie banners — you just open it and press play.

Why I built it: I listen to radio from the region every day, but the stations are scattered across dozens of slow, ad-heavy sites, and half of them don't even work on mobile. There's a big audience too — millions across the Balkans plus a large diaspora who miss their home stations.

A few decisions I made on purpose:

- SEO-first, not feature-first. The existing players are JavaScript SPAs with basically no SEO, so they can't be found on Google. I generate 500+ static pages (one per station, country and genre). The site got indexed and started getting organic clicks within days.

- No AdSense. Ad networks force a cookie banner and slow everything down. I'd rather keep it fast and cookie-free, and monetize later with featured-station placements / direct sponsorships.

- Boring stack. A single static HTML file + Supabase + Netlify. No build step. Easy to ship and maintain solo.

Where I'm at: it's only days old and pre-revenue. Early signs are encouraging — fast indexing, first clicks, and I'm growing the station list daily from user suggestions. Now I'm fully focused on distribution.

Two things I'd love your input on:

1. For a free, regional utility like this, what actually worked for you to get the first 1,000 real users?

2. How would you think about monetizing without hurting the no-ads experience?

Happy to share more about the SEO generation or the Supabase backend if it's useful. Thanks!