Almost every country station in the world streams online now, from Nashville's WSM to a one-person station playing western swing out of a spare bedroom. Listening is usually as simple as pressing play. When it isn't, the reason is nearly always one of a handful of things. Here is what is worth knowing.
The quickest way
On this site, every station with a round play button plays right on the page, in the player bar at the bottom of the screen. Moving to another page stops the sound — that is how browsers work — but the player remembers the last station you had on, so one press of play picks it up again.
If you are not sure what to listen to, On air now shows the song playing on every station at this moment, and the dial on the front page lays the stations out from old-time on the left to today's hits on the right.
What the numbers mean
Station listings show the stream quality as a bitrate and a format, like "128 kbps MP3". The bitrate is how much data the stream uses each second. Higher usually sounds better, up to a point.
- 128 kbps is the most common bitrate in our directory — more than 300 stations use it — and an MP3 at that rate sounds fine on a phone or in the car.
- AAC and AAC+ are newer formats that sound better at a lower bitrate. An AAC+ stream at 48 or 64 kbps can sound about as good as an MP3 at twice the rate, which makes it good for listening on mobile data.
- Anything at 192 kbps or more is for good headphones or a hi-fi. A few dozen stations in our directory stream at 320 kbps.
How much data does radio use?
It is easy to work out. A 128 kbps stream uses 128 kilobits a second, which comes to about 58 megabytes an hour. So:
- 64 kbps: about 29 MB an hour
- 128 kbps: about 58 MB an hour
- 320 kbps: about 144 MB an hour
A full working day of 128 kbps radio on mobile data is around half a gigabyte. If you listen a lot away from Wi-Fi, choose an AAC+ station at 64 kbps or below.
Why won't this station play in my browser?
Some stations in our directory show a greyed-out button with an arrow instead of a play button, and their pages explain that they stream over plain http. This is the most common reason a station will not play on a website.
Web pages served securely — with the padlock in your address bar — are not allowed by modern browsers to load audio from an insecure (http) address. Our site is secure, so browsers block those streams. There is nothing wrong with the station, and there is nothing we can do to change it; it is up to each station to move to a secure address, and many have.
The fix is easy. Open the station's page here, press Open the stream, and play the link in a media player instead of the browser. VLC, which is free on every platform, will play almost any radio stream you throw at it. We still show you what those stations are playing, so you can decide before you open it.
When a stream stops
Internet radio drops out for the same reasons any live stream does: a slow connection, a busy server at the station's end, or the station itself going off air. A few things to try:
- Wait a few seconds. Live streams buffer. Our player will say "Buffering" while it catches up.
- Try a lower bitrate. Many stations offer the same programme at two qualities. SomaFM's Boot Liquor, for example, is listed as both a 320 kbps MP3 and a 128 kbps AAC stream.
- Check whether it is on air. Every station's page shows when we last checked it, and whether it answered. Stations that stop answering are marked off air and moved down the listings.
In the car and on a smart speaker
Most phones can play a station from this site through Bluetooth or a car's phone connection like any other audio. Many of the big broadcast stations also have their own apps and smart-speaker skills, which can be more convenient if you always listen to the same one. For smaller online stations, a web player like ours is often the easiest way in.
Found a station we don't list?
Send it to us. We check every stream before it goes in, and if it plays and it plays country, we will add it.