When it came to that softer feel there were some important and influential radio stations and individual shows. At the tail end of 2007 I already discovered some jazz influenced stuff, appearing on a chart provided by KX Radio. Shortly after that I discovered Lefto's Studio Brussel show, followed by more. You can find those sources and influences in the pics & sounds section below.

⟶  Sound 1: A bumper hourly broadcast by FIP, around 2009. This was a heavily influential station, discovered in the late 00s.  |  Sound 2: Fragments of 'De Hop' at Studio Brussel, spring 2008. The show was presented by the Belgian DJ Lefto.  |  Pic 1: A screenshot of the site of Laid Back Radio. I often listened to this Belgian and near-professional Radionomy station.  |  Pic 2: The site of the French radio station Nova. I really liked this busy design - and I still do.

There was also the phenomenon of Radionomy, which hosted thousands of amateur and near-professional radio stations, mainly French or Walloon. You could create your own station for free - excluding the cost of purchasing music and producing any jingles.   ✱   The platform offered a lot of nice stations. Some favorites are in the pics section below.

⟶  Pic 1: A screenshot of the page (+ a playlist) of a very active Radionomy creator. I liked his stations. The 'formats' were in the vein of FIP and Nova.  |  Pic 2: Laid Back Radio's playlist page on the Radionomy site. This station was mentioned earlier.  |  Pic 3: Bolz Radio on the Radionomy site.  |  Pic 4: AlternativeRadio on the Radionomy site.  |  Pic 5: The site of Double XX. This station sounded noticeably different. While the the previously mentioned stations leaned toward a FIP or Nova-style sound, Double XX embraced a late-80s/early-90s dance format. It still exists today.  |  Pic 6: Some discussion about Double XX.

Besides the stations mentioned above, there are quite a few others I enjoyed a lot. Those stations don't really fit the paragraphs above.

⟶  Pic 1: An article about KX Radio, published in the Dutch magazine Nieuwe Revu.  |  Pic 2: Chérie FM, featuring 'Summer Hits' and others.  |  Pic 3: The Studio Brussel site; these are some 'De Hop' related messages. That show, presented by Lefto, was mentioned earlier.  |  Pic 4: Soma FM. I liked Groove Salad, Drone Zone and Illinois Street Lounge. I even searched for compilation CDs containing that type of 50s/60s exotica.

I also installed Wi-Fi and bought my first standalone internet radio (and after a while a second one). Especially when I didn't feel well, it was perfect: discovering nice music without much effort. Compared to the FM transmitter it was a lot easier to use.

⟶  Pic 1: The Grundig RRCD3760, my first standalone internet radio. This radio was huge.  |  Pic 2: An important 'aggregator' back in the days was VTuner. The pic shows a screenshot of the website.

I still visited discussion boards, partly about music. I regularly read music blogs, including KindaMuzik, which was fairly famous in The Netherlands. Another one was MusicFrom. In 2010 I joined Twitter, and from time to time I tweeted something about music. I didn't own a smartphone yet.

⟶  Pic 1: A blog by a train passenger reflecting on the changing zeitgeist, for example the introduction of iPhones. Music-related? Indirectly, if you read through the lines.  |  Pic 2: A screenshot of a funny story (subject: Caro Emerald) on MusicFrom, sourced from the Internet Archive. Although some visual elements didn’t survive, it still captures the look and feel of old-school music blogs.

Around 2009, most music-related articles I read were already being published online. I still read plenty of print magazines, though these were mostly general-interest or women's magazines. The free magazines that had flourished in the previous era were nearly gone by then. The Dutch music magazine Oor, however, was still around, and from time to time I'd come across solid music writing in other publications as well - such as my TV guide (VaraGids), Nieuwe Revu, and others.

⟶  Pic: An article reflecting on the 2000s, published in 'Oor' near the end of the decade.

I created personal music sites but in a fairly low-key way. From the early 2010s onwards, I started to become more actively involved with it again.

⟶  Pic 1: My music site in 2008.  |  Pic 2: Another site of mine, created in spring 2010.

Listening to FM radio mostly happened when listening to internet radio wasn't possible.   ✱   At the end of the year I tuned in to the annual 'Top 2000' at the Dutch public radio station NPO Radio 2. The edition of 2008 was the first edition I really paid attention to.

⟶  Pic 1: Dutch radio schedules, printed from the TV guide 'VaraGids' (October 2008).  |  Pic 2: An article about the Dutch public youth station 3FM, also published in the 'VaraGids'.

Alongside new releases, I discovered quite a few older tracks (months, year or decades old), similar to the previous era - featuring more guitars than the recent tracks I was playing at the time. That period was marked by the highly contrived 'indie voice', a sound you'd hear not only in guitar bands but also in more electronic music, like electroclash. It never really appealed to me.   ✱   This period felt the most blurred in terms of enjoying new versus older music. New tracks were often discovered by accident, especially in late 2008 and 2009, when health issues contributed to a growing sense of nonchalance.   ✱   Burning CDs happened less + more messy. Summer 2008 I pulled the plug from the since early 2002 created series, containing my favorite recent songs.

⟶  Pic 1: Two CDs of this era containing recent music, a burned one from 2008 (one of the last CDs in the series on which I collected my favorite recent tracks) and a bought one from 2010 (Nova Tunes, also one of the last).  |  Pic 2: Some burned and bought CDs containing tracks that were already a bit older at the time.

I still loved visiting second-hand shops and flea markets, such as the Snuffelmarkt, Meimarkt and the Car Boot Sale (Oss). Sadly many of the second-hand stores from the previous era were closing down now.

⟶  Pic 1: The Car Boot Sale in Oss.  |  Pic 2: Some articles about the problems Dutch record stores were facing.

I owned an MP3 player, though I didn’t use it very actively at the time. Others, on the other hand, seemed to carry theirs everywhere. The number of tracks that could be squeezed into such a tiny device in someone’s pocket sometimes felt almost excessive. I had already experienced it some years earlier.   ✱   I mostly used my own MP3 player to digitise my old cassette tapes, so I could eventually get rid of them. My old Creative MuVo had a built-in recording function.

⟶  Pic 1: An article (written early in 2008) about MP3 players and the overwhelming availability of music: 22000 songs and nothing to listen to. At that moment Spotify was in its infancy.  |  Pic 2: In 2010, I hadn’t discovered Spotify yet, but this person already had (source: MusicFrom).