I listen to a lot of music, I’m a big fan of electronica with my main love being Trance of which I have a fair collection. But I mostly listen to it through the digital streaming service on DI.fm (which requires a monthly sub). I can play it through my PC (via AIMP) or through my phone through the DI.fm app. I also like most other genres of music with a few exceptions (Death Metal, Boy/Girl Bands & some other stuff I don’t like but don’t recall the specific genre… that stuff Olly likes mainly…) and of course like anyone even the genres I like there will be tracks I don’t enjoy.
So today I wanted to listen to some pop… I have a playlist for all of the BBC national radio stations BBC1 – 6 (basically), but since I created the playlist it seems these have all gone offline (the specific streams not the stations). So I hade to dig around and make a new one. The BBC would much prefer that everyone use their iPlayer to consume their content, I’d prefer not to so find my own way while I can.
While I was doing that I decided to try and make a mega compilation of all the UK “radio” stations. Wanted to make a list of all the broadcast stations that also stream, specifically not internet only stations based in the UK. And I found such a list (here), but that won’t work directly as a playlist.
So with some buggering about in Notepad++, Excel and Dreamweaver I forced that list into a couple of playlists that anyone who uses a MP3 player (software) should be able to use to play lots of different radio stations.
Some caveats:
- Many of the entries had multiple links, where possible I have only used the HQ link, but it wasn’t always possible to work out which link was which.
- Some entries were listed as poor quality or dead and I tried to remove those links, I know I missed one initially so it’s likely I missed more, I haven’t checked all 500+ to make sure they work.
- A .pls file (WinAmp Playlist) is merely a list of URLs to specific audio streams, it shouldn’t be possible to damage your PC/player/etc but if you do that’s on you… 😉
Playlists:
- BBC Radio.pls – This playlist is just the main BBC Radio streams (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, plus extras).
- UK Radio.pls – The main list.
So there you have it if you want it.