I cannot recommend somafm enough. It's a commercial free, listener supported radio network that has several dozen different stations with music from just about every genre you'd want. They don't have commercials but they do have semi-frequent station id stingers (like two or three times an hour) and a couple times a year they have a donation drive to keep the lights on and drop in more requests to donate (like NPR does, but less frequent). My favorite stations are Lush, N5MD, The Dark Zone, Suburbs of Goa, and Groove Salad. Hope that helps!

https://jetsetradio.live/

I listen to Radio Paradise often. They have a few stations for different moods. It's listener supported and there are no commercials. Just a "thanks for listening to Radio Paradise" a few times an hour.

Agree re ads.

I know people who like Apple Music. I don’t want a subscription service, but it might suit you?

MP3 player or self-hosted streaming bring music under your control while still allowing portability & arbitrarily long playlists.

Like you, though, I don’t always want to manually curate my playlists. I need to look into self-hosted options that will automatically refine playlists for me similar to how Apple Music does for its users. Open to recommendations!

Yeah, they're pretty cancer. Get yourself an mp3 player, fam. Or internet radio. You lose that sweet fidelity decay that comes from radio band broadcasting but at least you don't have to be advertised to or only hear the top 40 from America every hour

+1 on internet radio

If you like psytrance, Psyndora is a station from Greece that has free streaming and almost never any commercials. I listen to it while I'm working or doing chores.

I can't say I find the ads on the radio stations I listen to especially unbearable, though there's definitely a lot.. but I also mostly listen to the radio for the hosts and not for the music, so there's that

If I want to listen to something I have a playlist of songs I enjoy so I just put that on

SomaFM and Radio Paradise (already mentioned) are great picks, both listener-supported and basically ad-free. If part of it is the being-alone feeling and not only the music, one more option: I made a small site, coquiet.app. It plays calm ambient music with no ads or talking, and shows how many other people are in the same "room" right now. No account, no chat, nothing to manage. Disclosure: it's my project. It won't replace a good radio host, but some people like the quiet company.

Commercials on regular radio is so bad now, I can take a 45-60 minute drive and not hear a single fucking song the entire time. Just commercials.