Video game music is special. Hearing it can bring back nostalgic feelings from your favorite games or set the mood for almost any occasion. Even if you don't usually play video games, it's still easy to enjoy the music while you work or study, since composers create the music to work well in the background anyway.

Let's look at the best video game music radio websites to play hours of game music without you having to look up tracks individually.

1. Rainwave

Rainwave is by far the best video game music radio website. It contains a wealth of game tracks, and the extensive features make it a must-know site for any video game music fan.

On Rainwave, you'll find five different channels for game music, accessible via a bar at the top. These are:

• All: Listen to everything Rainwave offers.
• Game: Plays only music straight from games.
• Chiptune: Limited to 8-bit music from older systems and composers of this music style.
• OC Remix: A station containing only tracks from OC Remix, one of the top sites for remixed video game music.
• Covers: Contains official and fan-made covers of game music.

Each Rainwave station shuffles its huge pool of music. When you sign up for a free account, you open up the best functions of the site, like being able to vote for one of three tracks to play next.

When signed in, you're also able to use the Library and Search tabs to request anything in Rainwave's library. There are thousands of Albums and Artists, as well as Categories that group a game franchise together in one place.

The service uses a cooldown system to prevent the same music from playing too often. Each song, album, and category has a waiting period before it will play again. For example, if a track from Donkey Kong Country 2 plays, Rainwave won't play that track again for a few days, won't play anything from DKC 2 again for several hours, and won't play anything from other Donkey Kong games for a short time. Cooled-down tracks are shown in blue.

The site allows you to rate each song, as well as add songs/albums to your favorites. When a track or album you've favorited comes up in the voting queue, you'll see it highlighted in yellow for easy identification. And it keeps track of this review data. You can see the site average for every track and album, as well as clicking on your own profile to see your rating history.

Overall, Rainwave is a highly impressive radio service for video game music. Whether you passively enjoy its extensive library or dive into rating and all the available options, it should be in your bookmarks.

2. VGM Radio

VGM Radio isn't nearly as impressive as Rainwave, but it's still a decent site for pulling up a radio station of video game music quickly. Once you click the Play button, you'll start hearing the current track and can enjoy music from there.

That's really it; there's no option to skip tracks, vote on the next song, or sign up for an account. In our testing, the site played a track from Super Mario Odyssey before moving to a song from Mega Man 2. But there's lesser-known music to enjoy too; the third track we heard was from Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

Unfortunately, the current track listing doesn't update as soon as the song changes, which can be a bit confusing if you want to look something up. And in the vein of traditional radio, you'll also hear occasional "station identifiers" announcing that you're listening to VGM Radio.

3. RPGamers Radio

While the RPGamers site hasn't been updated in over a year at the time of writing, its radio page is still a solid way to enjoy video game music radio. Like VGM Radio, it plays one track at a time. However, it has additional features and doesn't require logging in.

Use the Skin dropdown box to tweak the look of the player, theming it in the look of various games like Super Metroid, Halo, or Chrono Trigger. You can also vote on songs using a simple Plus or Minus button to like or dislike them. As people vote, you'll see the "experience level" change.

From the menu on the player, you can choose to see recent songs, request a track from the library of roughly 4,500, or join the site's Discord. It also shows how many people are listening.

Overall, RPGamers isn't as extensive as Rainwave, but it offers more than VGM Radio.

4. NoLife-radio

This site doesn't stand out for any particular reason, but it's worth visiting if you want more of a video game music fix. It simply plays one track and allows you to click Yes or No to vote if you like it; you don't have to sign in.

Aside from the Play button at the top-left and a volume slider, there's not much else to explore. NoLife does keep a log of previous tracks, making it easy to go back and find something you liked from earlier. The color scheme can be hard on the eyes and looks dated, but there's also something kind of charming about it.

5. Kohina

Kohina's website looks like something you'd see on a hacker's screen in a movie, but it's a good source for chiptune music from video games and other sources. You'll hear lots of retro tracks from the Game Boy, arcade titles, and similar.

The simple text-based interface contains the current track and previous songs. You can also see the length of each track on the right side.

6. Final Fantasy Radio

If you're a big fan of the Final Fantasy series, check this page out. As the name suggests, it offers a simple player that plays tunes from the legendary JRPG franchise.

The homepage notes that the original founder of the site has passed away, but it's still run by others in his honor.

7. Rapture Radio

If you're a fan of the retro music from the 1930s—1950s that's featured in series like Fallout and BioShock, you'll love this page. It plays a mix of classic genres like doo-wop, swing, big band, and traditional pop. Between songs, you'll sometimes hear in-game "advertisements" that play over the PA system in the BioShock games.

A drawback is that the dedicated page this site offers, which included information about the current track, isn't working properly as of this writing. However, you can still enjoy the music right on the homepage; there's just no track information. Try sites that help you identify songs if you want to track one down.

If you don't hear anything, you may need to give the site permission in your browser to automatically play audio. A prompt to do this should appear in your address bar.

Other Sources for Video Game Music

We've picked out several great sources for video game music, but these are far from the only options. YouTube has tons of video game music channels that offer several hours of music from all sorts of titles. A quick search for "video game music mix" should bring up plenty, and you can often find a mix to suit any mood, like exciting or calming.

You'll also find huge video game music mixes on streaming services. On Spotify, for instance, try Best of Video Game Music or Video Game Music for Studying/Work. Playlists like these contain many hours of music to zone out with.

Enjoy Video Game Music With a Radio Experience

With these excellent video game music radio sites, you can listen to a huge mix of game music without having to choose all the songs yourself. Just open one of these pages and enjoy the tunes they bring.

And if you want to branch out a bit, there are some other music genres that all gamers should enjoy.