BBC Radio Streams – update
- Editor’s note: a list of new BBC AAC HLS internet ratio streams can be found here.
Over the last few hours, some new BBC streams have appeared. At the moment I don’t know whether these are official BBC streams or if some public-spirited person is re-streaming. Though I’m pretty sure the ones coming from the “lstn.lv” domain are in fact pukka BBC streams. Anyway, as of 2023-10-28 02:00 UTC, these streams actually work. However they don’t work directly. You need to paste them into a suitable player, such as VLC.
I have tested them all on latest Debian Linux (Trixie aka “unstable”) c/w VLC media player (version 3.0.19). They also work nicely on the Advanced Radio Player KDE widget, for those with latest KDE plasma Desktop. Note, they are HLS streams, which means that if you are running Linux then you will need a full gstreamer installation. These all work in the UK. However I have not been able to test outside the UK yet. Please note that the URLs are long and may wrap onto a new line in your browser. So if you are copy-and-pasting, please ensure you have copied the entire URL. It’s an easy mistake to make.
Station |
URL |
BBC Radio One (320 kb/s) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_radio_one/bbc_radio_one.isml/bbc_radio_one-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC 1 Xtra (320 kb/s) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_1xtra/bbc_1xtra.isml/bbc_1xtra-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC Radio One Relax (320 kb/s ) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_radio_one_relax/bbc_radio_one_relax.isml/bbc_radio_one_relax-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC Radio One Dance (320 kb/s) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_radio_one_dance/bbc_radio_one_dance.isml/bbc_radio_one_dance-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC Radio Two (320 kb/s) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_radio_two/bbc_radio_two.isml/bbc_radio_two-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC Radio Three (320 kb/s) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_radio_three/bbc_radio_three.isml/bbc_radio_three-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC Radio Four FM (320 kb/s) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_radio_fourfm/bbc_radio_fourfm.isml/bbc_radio_fourfm-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC Radio Four Extra |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_radio_four_extra/bbc_radio_four_extra.isml/bbc_radio_four_extra-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC Five Live (320 kb/s) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_radio_five_live/bbc_radio_five_live.isml/bbc_radio_five_live-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC Five Sport Extra (320 kb/s) |
http://lstn.lv/bbc.m3u8?station=bbc_radio_five_live_sports_extra&bitrate=320000 |
BBC 6 Music (320 kb/s) |
http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_6music/bbc_6music.isml/bbc_6music-audio=320000.m3u8 |
BBC 6 Music (320 kb/s) |
http://lstn.lv/bbc.m3u8?station=bbc_6music&bitrate=320000 |
All of the above have been retrieved from…
Naturally, I would be interested to know if they work for you? 🙂
Hi
Up until yesterday I used ffmpeg to capture the R4/R4EX stream and download to an mp3 of the required length. This command wrapped in a BAT file on a windows computer and launched with Task Scheduler. I could go on holiday and record programs to listen to on my return. It worked great. As the stream died yesterday this ceased to work.
I have tried both the R4 and R4EX streams in the above and neither appears to work. By contrast the browser returns “Not Found”. If I put a pause command in the BAT file I get “Server returned 400 Bad Request” which AFAIK amounts to the same thing.
If you want to record, then you could try yt-dlp. It is a command line tool written in python initially designed to rip Youtube video. But these days it rips all sorts of streams, example…
yt-dlp http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_6music/bbc_6music.isml/bbc_6music-audio=320000.m3u8
Various ways to install it depending on your system. I used the python-based pipx method. But there are many other ways. More info…
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation
Hi
Up until yesterday I used ffmpeg to capture the R4/R4EX stream and download to an mp3 of the required length. This command wrapped in a BAT file on a windows computer and launched with Task Scheduler. I could go on holiday and record programs to listen to on my return. It worked great. As the stream died yesterday this ceased to work.
I have tried both the R4 and R4EX streams in the above and neither appears to work. By contrast the browser returns “Not Found”. If I put a pause command in the BAT file I get “Server returned 400 Bad Request” which AFAIK amounts to the same thing.
Thank you for the info. You will need to copy and paste a stream into the “Open Network Stream” dialog in VLC, or similar. No other mods should be needed. Please try the new streams above in VLC and let us know how you get on.
Further to my previous comment., I have now tried the Radio 3 and Radio 4 URLs via MPD (version 0.21) on Linux Ubuntu 20.04. They work fine – as long as you like. My previous test and problem with VLC was probably a fault in my ssytem. Using “pulseaudio -k and alsactl restore’ fixed the issue. Thanks again,
Ian
Thank you for letting me know.
I tried to post before but I got an Apache error. That post reported failure but I can report that subsequently I managed to make it work (for R4EX stream definitely)
I use it with ffmpeg wrapped up in a BAT file launched via Windows Task Scheduler to make 30/60 minute shows I can listen to later.
We only have a relatively elderly server and this site is being absolutely clobbered this morning! 🙂
Seems that the new streams work overseas. I just had a report from Hong Kong that the BBC Radio For FM stream works there directly.
PS: You can delete the first two comments as they are redundant. My error the first time (for reference) is the URL printed above is wrapped around and I didn’t copy paste it correctly. (Rookie error)
Ah OK – we all make them! lol. Thanks for letting us know. I’ll leave it there if I may, please, because I’m sure others may make the same error. I almost did in fact. 🙂 I’ll probably add a warning to the text when I have a few spare moments.
Thank heavens for this information. I’ve replaced your urls in my ffmpeg run string and it works again. Let’s hope it keeps working.
I’m not sure who “Akamai” is but if they publishing this content I’m happy.
Many thanks
Thanks for letting us know. Turns out Akamai is a massive American content distribution network (CDN). Seems the BBC uses it to distribute its radio streams. Also appears that the lstn.lv streams are also distributed via Akamai.
The Radio 6 URL is working in Firefox. Hopefully should work in MPD or I have lost a large feature from my whole home audio…
Interesting. Thank you for letting us know. I’d also be interested to learn how you get on using it in MPD, please?
I have been using the BBC Radio streams successfully using a raspberry pi setup with ‘Volumio’, until the BBC broke the links last week. The new URLs seem to work fine with VLC or Foobar2000 – however in Volumio the is an annoying stutter every few seconds. Furthermore the play/pause function not longer works properly with the new URLs – this is definitely a problem with the BBC links because I have no problms with France Musique, Linn Classical, Ö1 Austrian Radio and so on.
The problems go away when I use the “lstn.lv” streams even though these appear to contain the same URLs as listed here. I would appreciate comments from anyone who has had similar experience with Volumio/rpi setups.
H Michael, thanks for your feedback. Glad to hear you have working streams again.
I can’t offer any sensible suggestions with regard to the stuttering in your particular configuration I’m afraid. FWIW, I run Debian 13 (aka “testing” aka “Trixie”) GNU/Linux, c/w latest VLC (3.0.19). I also run KDE plasma desktop v5.27.8 c/w “Advanced Radio Player” widget. Both these methods play these streams. Also work fine on Ubuntu and on KDE’s Neon distributions on various other machines. And if I download the M3U’s I can open them successfully in VLC on both Android 9 and Android 12. I’m also told they work OK on MacOS – providing you download the M3U file first and then open it using the “File -> Open …” method.
I have done a bit more digging. Seems “lstn.lv” and “akamaized.net” are both distributed via the large American Akamai network. I also know that there have been issues with Volumio and HLS strams in the past. It might be worth raising this on the fora over there, perhaps…
https://community.volumio.com/t/understanding-hls-streams-and-an-issue-with-volumio/42037.
I am in UK. Radio 5 Live gives message “Unfortunately due to rights restrictions…” whenever there is live sport being broadcast. Using MPD (MPC) on a Raspberry Pi.
Thanks for your message. It does that I’m afraid. Publication rights to some sporting events are sometimes restricted to a particular geographical area or audience. Seems it really is a feature, not a bug. 🙂
… but radio 5 live extra is broadcasting the cricket if you replace “ww” with “uk” in the url. (considering England performance not a great feature!)
I never said it was a great feature lol 🙂 But I’m pretty sure it is an intentional one. I can’t prove it yet, But I suspect Akamai (the BBC’s CDN provider) has made the the “uk” stream unavailable outside the UK.
So I was doing some research today, and came upon this website. So it looks like that pool_904 thing, I recognized it earlier not only today from listening to BBC Sport using a VPN, but also the BBC TV streams. The new streams are showing up in the js_callback javascript for each station, so not only the regular BBC radio streams, but also the online only streams can be gotten as well. And yes, ww means worldwide, which means anyone can listen to the streams. uk is for UK only, which means only those streams can be listened to in the UK, and in the highest quality possible. UK is the only way for BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra as well as CBeebies Radio will work.
Thanks for the info. 🙂