Web Radio Player — Build and Organise Your Own Internet Radio List

A free internet radio player for your own station list

Web Radio Player is a free online radio player that runs in your browser. You build your own list of internet radio stations, either by searching a directory of 50,000+ stations or by pasting any Shoutcast or Icecast stream URL. You can tag and star stations, drag them into order, test which ones have died and export or share the list. There is no account and no app to install. It is for anyone who listens to a handful of stations and wants them in one place, without a radio app deciding what shows up.

How to add a radio stream URL

There are two ways. Search looks the station up in the Radio Browser directory and adds it with its stream URL, country, codec and bitrate already filled in. Paste URL is for anything that is not in the directory: give it the stream address and a name.

A station's stream URL is usually on its own site, behind a link called listen, stream or tune in. If clicking that link opens a desktop media player instead of a web page, right-click it and copy the link address. The address of the audio often ends in something like /stream, /live or a port such as :8000. A station's homepage is a web page, not audio, so pasting that plays nothing.

.pls and .m3u links are not streams either. They are small text files that point at the real stream. Paste one anyway: the player tries to read the address inside, which works when the station allows other sites to read the file. If it does not, open the file in a text editor and copy the line that starts with File1=.

This is a player for continuous live streams. Podcasts are episode files that belong in a podcast app, and YouTube does not give out a stream address that a plain audio player can use.

Why a station will not play

Almost every failure comes down to one of three things, and none of them is really about the player.

• The stream is http:// and this page is https://. Browsers block insecure audio on a secure page before any code on the page runs, and nothing here can change that. It is the most common reason an internet radio stream fails in a browser. When you paste an http address, the player tells you instead of failing quietly. Check whether the station also has an https address; many do now. Otherwise the fix is outside the browser: an https mirror, or a desktop or phone app. A browser player that "fixes" this is sending the audio through its own server.
• You pasted a playlist, not a stream. See the .pls and .m3u note above.
• The station is gone. Stations move, rebrand and shut down, usually without redirecting the old address. check all stations tries to open every stream in the background and waits for audio. A station that answers is marked ok, one that errors or stays silent past the timeout is marked dead, and an http address is marked http. A slow station on a poor connection can be marked dead by mistake, so run the check again before you delete anything.

Supported stream formats and data use

MP3 and AAC streams from Shoutcast and Icecast servers, which is most internet radio, play in every browser. Ogg Vorbis and Opus work in Chrome and Firefox but not Safari. HLS streams ending in .m3u8 play in Safari but usually not in Chrome or Firefox. The bitrate shows next to each station. Listening here uses the same data as any other player, because it is the same stream fetched straight from the station: a 128 kbps stream is roughly 58 MB an hour. On mobile data, pick a lower-bitrate stream if the station offers one.

Dropouts, autoplay and background playback

Internet radio streams drop now and then. A plain browser audio player does not retry, which is why so many go quiet and stay quiet. This one reconnects by itself, waiting a little longer before each try so it does not hammer a struggling server, and gives up after six attempts.

Nothing plays until you press play once, because browsers do not let a page start sound on its own. On a desktop, audio keeps going in a background tab. On a phone it depends on the browser and system: most keep a playing stream alive with the screen off, some pause background tabs to save battery. If the lock-screen controls appear, it will usually keep playing.

Why there is no song title or visualiser

Shoutcast and Icecast send the current track name mixed into the audio as ICY metadata, and the browser strips it before the page can read it. Some Icecast stations publish the current track separately, and the player shows it when they do. For most you see the station name only. A browser player that always shows track names is either routing the audio through its own server or only supports a short list of stations. A spectrum visualiser has the same problem: the browser only lets a page analyse audio from servers that give permission, and almost no radio server does. Asking for it anyway would stop most stations from playing, so this player leaves it out.

Where your list is stored, and how to move it

Your list lives in your browser's local storage on the device you are using. There is no account, no sync and no server copy. Nobody can mine it, but clearing your browser data deletes it, and a list built on your laptop does not show up on your phone by itself.

export saves the whole list as a JSON file you can keep or import somewhere else. share list packs it into a link, so you can mail it to yourself or send it to a friend; links hold up to 60 stations, the file has no limit. import takes this tool's own file, a plain array or any JSON with a stations array. It is relaxed about field names (url, stream or url_resolved, and name or title), so exports from other players often work. Stations already in your list are skipped.

Private by design

Which station you play, when and for how long stays in your browser. The audio comes straight from the station, just as if you had opened the stream URL yourself. The only other request the tool makes is the directory search, and only when you press search. The page also loads an anonymous, cookie-free page-view counter. The Radio Browser directory is a free, open, community-run database used by several open-source radio apps. If it is unreachable, the search box says so and the rest of the page carries on; your own list never depends on it.

You are listening to public streams exactly as the stations publish them, with nothing recorded or rebroadcast. The tool is free, with no account, no limits and no ads.

Keyboard shortcuts and lock-screen controls

Space play and pause · ↓ next station · ↑ previous station · Esc close a dialog. Shortcuts are ignored while you type in a box. Through the browser's Media Session support, play, pause and next or previous station also work from a phone's lock screen, a headset and keyboard media keys. The sleep timer stops playback after 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes, fading down over the last 30 seconds, then puts the volume back where it was. Press the button again to cancel it.

More audio tools

For your own files, use the MP3 player or the retro Winamp player with a 10-band EQ. For background sound while you work, Focus Audio generates white, pink and brown noise. Turn audio into a live picture with the music visualizer, or trim and export files in the audio editor. Everything else is on the music tools page.