Latest BBC HLS Radio streams

By GarfPosted on Cat Journal, Linux, Radio, Technology21 Comments

Following the fiasco at the end of last week, when the BBC killed all its HLS internet radio streams, I am pleased to report that we’ve found a bunch of new ones, that seem to work. Moreover,  apart from a few irritating caveats, they seem to work well. So I bundled up the URLs and put them in a standard M3U playlist file

There are two BBC m3U files…

One is a standard M3U playlist with standard HLS AAC streams. The other is also a standard M3U file, but includes the BBC’s new “rewindable HLS streams“. In VLC you can actually rewind these back around six hours. Seems not all streams are “rewindable“. But the rewindable list includes all those streams that are rewindable, plus non-rewindable versions of those that are not rewindable.

You should be able to open either of these in VLC or similar and have a complete list of available BBC HLS radio streams. This should save users a lot of copy-and-pasting because it will load all the stream URLs into VLC as a big single playlist, with every station appearing as an object on that playlist. I have also included a third M3U. This our list of around 140 mostly non-BBC  stations, which mostly use conventional shoutcast type streams.

  1. BBC non-rewindable stations:
    20231029-bbc-radio-norewind.m3u
  2. BBC rewindable stations:
    20231029-bbc-radio-with-rewind.m3u
  3. Other Stations:
    20231029-internet-radio.m3u

Editor’s note: these M3Us seem to work directly if you run Debian or Ubuntu Linux and have latest VLC. However on other operating systems such as Android and MacOS, you may need to download them first (right-click/long-tap -> “Save As”) then open them in VLC  using the “File -> Open …” method.

I have also made these M3U files available as web-viewable plan text files…

This enables you to copy and paste individual URL(s) you wish to use directly into a player of your choice. You can also use these to create station playlists of your own, in a text editor of your choice.

  1. BBC non-rewindable stations: 
    20231029-bbc-radio-norewind.m3u.txt
  2. BBC rewindable stations:
    20231029-bbc-radio-with-rewind.m3u.txt
  3. Other stations:
    20231029-internet-radio.m3u.txt

Notes

  • The stream for BBC World Service is one of the older shoutcast type streams. But it works.
  • The stream for BBC Five Live Sports Extra seems quite flaky, with some users unable to connect at all, even here in the UK. However I don’t plan to investigate this further because at time of writing, the stream merely offers a repeated loop telling listeners how bloody marvellous it is, whilst not actually containing any content! 
  • The above information comes with no warranty express or implied.
  • The above are public radio streams supplied by the BBC via its chosen content distribution networks. All GarfNet is doing is displaying the URLs for these streams. We have nothing whatsoever to do with, nor are we responsible for the actual streams themselves. Moreover it’s perfectly possible that the BBC could kill these streams, with or without warning at some point in the future. However, as of right now (2023-10-29 17:30 UTC) all the above URL’s seem to work.
  • I have also included links to our “Other Stations” M3U playlist.
  • More information about using internet radio can be found on our internet radio page…

Credits

With thanks to  https://radio-browser.info and https://gist.github.com/bpsib and to reader Ian Robertson and long-term friend and supporter Rob Weller for testing the above and reporting back.

Related Images:

21 thoughts on “Latest BBC HLS Radio streams”

  1. Stephen
    2023-10-30 at 18:43

    I pasted the links I wanted into Apple Music (replacing http with itls) and normal service has been restored. I can again play BBC radio throughout the house using Airplay from Apple Music.

    I had no idea that the previous streams had been killed and was tearing my hair out trying to work out what had gone wrong. Long may these new streams continue.

    Thank you very much.

    Reply
  2. John
    2023-11-01 at 06:51

    Gday Pal,
    Thanks a bunch. I love listening to radio 4 from australia – and now my 15 year old bash script is still running! I really hate the overhead of having to run a browser. You’re doing the Lord’s work.
    Cheers
    John

    Reply
  3. zenodotus280
    2023-11-05 at 17:39

    Thanks for providing the updated links in plain text. I run a hobbyist web service to cache BBC radio streams and then play them back at pre-set delays to simulate the experience of listening live despite the time zone differences.

    Here is my repo and the issue that you helped me with:
    https://github.com/zenodotus280/BBC-Radio-Relay/issues/20

    And the service that serves the audio (currently non-functional until I implement the changes):
    https://bbcradiorelay.net

    Reply
    • Garf
      2023-11-05 at 17:46

      Thanks for your message. That is a very interesting project. I’m sure that there a lot of people in that part of the planet who will appreciate your efforts. Thanks for the share. And do please let us know when your relays are functional again.

      Reply
  4. Ian
    2023-11-06 at 15:37

    Great work in supplying all the BBC radio stream URLs. I haven’t tried them all, but the national ones all work fine here in UK

    Reply
  5. Cedric
    2023-11-14 at 10:47

    Huge thanks, Garf. I was also going mad at why my URLs were no longer working .

    Yours work but I had compatibility issues (I’m using a Volumio streamer), the stream kept dropping out.

    However I also found updated URLs on github: https://gist.github.com/bpsib/67089b959e4fa898af69fea59ad74bc3

    If you go to the second section (BBC-Radio-lstn-HLS-.m3u look for the comment on better compatiblity), these worked for me.
    Bitrate is set at 96kb which is low, but just change the end of the URL to 32000 and that gives you a 320kb bitrate.
    e.g http://lstn.lv/bbc.m3u8?station=bbc_6music&bitrate=320000
    Perfect now.

    Reply
  6. Tone
    2023-11-30 at 18:14

    Thanks so much for these. Excellent work

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

captcha

Please enter the CAPTCHA text