Ubuntu – how to play BBC radios music live on rhythmbox after BBC stops WMA streams (februar 2015)

bansheerhythmbox

According to BBC radio stream page: "The way we stream radio is changing so we'll no longer be providing Windows Media Audio streams. Here's all you need to know about the change. … / … We have now (Feb 2015) started switching off Windows Media Audio for on-demand and Live radios streams will follow soon after …/… For live radio, each station will now be broadcast in the SHOUTcast mp3 format. This should work for most devices."

Then, since the beginning of februar 2015, *.asx streams of BBC radios (like asx stream of Radio1 for example) can not be played anymore with Rhythmbox. Playing this BBC radios axs streams, gives a voice explaining that this format is not supported any more.

Then, how could BBC music live radios (Radio1, Radio2, Radio6, …) be now listened accross Rhythmbox ? Which stream format ? Which urls ?

Best Answer

There are still MP3-based and AAC+ streams. The BBC doesn't directly maintain a list of these URLs but I have found a few. This is the best one I've found so far.

The problem here is most of the playlist items are hosted on RadioFeeds, not by the BBC. If RadioFeeds went down, you'd lose radio. The files they host are actually pretty slim playlist wrappers to stream URLs that are hosted on behalf of the BBC. You can use a little bit of CLI magic to get a list of direct URLs:

$ wget -qO- http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/bbcradio{1,2,3,4fm}.pls | grep -Po '(?<=File1=)[^?]+'
http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_radio1_mf_p
http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_radio2_mf_p
http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_radio3_mf_p
http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_radio4fm_mf_p

This site also has some direct .pls files for AAC+ that the BBC hosts. These are probably a better option in the long run.

$ wget -qO- http://www.listenlive.eu/uk.html | grep -Eo 'http://www\.bbc\.co\.uk.*.pls'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r1_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r2_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r4_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r4lw_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r4x_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r5l_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r5lsp_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r6_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r1x_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/ran_aaclca.pls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/meta/live/mp3/eneuk.pls
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