Some of the Internet radio stations I regularly listen to. Have it separately, or click on to get a pop-up.

Here’s some guidance regarding the above widget:

• I have little control over the logic of the widget that displays and plays these streams. I cannot even disable the automatic playing on page load, should this happen in your browser.
• There are some bugs I cannot fix, and they’re somewhere in the 180 KB frontend JS written by someone else. There are features that don’t quite work, but overall it’s a decent tool.
• I recommend using the scroll wheel to navigate in the list, as it’s quite long: over 200 streams, with only nine visible at any time.
• You don’t need to click on the playing arrow when you change the station: clicking on a station should make it play. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t, and you should click again on play. This JS code doesn’t always handle graciously some errors, and streams that otherwise are live and working might not play in this widget. It might help to choose another stream and come back a little bit later. Still, a few stations might not play at all in Firefox for Android.
• You should know that many streams don’t include ID3 metadata, and that the official apps and websites use associated JSON or other means to display what’s currently playing. It’s frustrating not to have that info in this widget, but it is what it is.
• It’s equally true that some official websites and apps are using HLS streams that this widget cannot play. When alternate AAC or MP3 streams are available, they’re not always as reliable as the HLS streams, despite all being “official” streams.
• Some radio stations have an insane number of different streams, as they correspond to different local FM stations, which have the freedom to insert local content in some time slots. Sometimes (almost) all such streams are playing the same content, some other times, almost each one is different. Thus, Ici Musique features 22 different streams, but I only included one; Radio Italia Anni 60 has 12 different streams, but I included none of them, as I couldn’t grasp the logic: most of them are broadcasting distinct contents most of the time; the Australian ABC stations have “time-deferred” streams that make no sense: who would like to hear contents already broadcasted hours ago in a different time zone?
• The logic of the list is not entirely apparent, and the first two stations aren’t those I listen most frequently to. I prefer the Swiss jazz and classical stations, but I tried to group them properly. Then, oldies with a French touch follow, not without inserting some German stations in between; more oldies from Italy, Germany, then the Netherlands. Towards the end, after the less popular Dutch stations, I added a selection of the Internet-only channels of Klassik Radio and France Musique, with the French Jazz Radio streams between them. At the end, some less popular stations.
• Why almost nothing from Britain? Because most UK radio streams don’t play outside the UK!
• Also as a bug, it may happen that this widget occasionally displays the ID3 from the previously played radio station. It doesn’t happen often, though.
• Hint: Some streams, especially the German ones, always start with a promotional 30-second advertisement. Generally, for the German ones, this ad can’t be skipped, but for most streams it helps to click on another stream, then click back on the one you were listening to: some content providers can’t be tricked into believing the ad has been played! This is especially useful when ads that don’t belong to the radio station, but to the streaming network, are randomly inserted into a stream, in the middle of what you’re listening to! (Such extra ads are localized in your language, not in the station’s language, so you’ll notice them.)
• It’s worth noting that some radio stations have a shitload of streams provided by different networks or streaming platforms, with different levels of reliability. Most such streams are not used in the official apps (nor on the official website), yet they’re active and paid for. However, there is no authoritative directory of all the streams, and sites such as fmstream.org only add to the mess, as they’re themselves not properly curated (this is why I stopped using TuneIn, radio.net, and the likes).
• Except for the unplayable HLS (when available), many radio stations only offer HTTP, not HTTPS streams. Because the retards at Google, at Mozilla, and at Apple believe that every single shit should come over SSL, and they have disabled mixed content (HTTP in an HTTPS page), such streams shouldn’t be able to play in recent browsers; however, this widget uses a proxy that works around this issue. Should this proxy be down, such radio stations won’t work. Please address your gratitude to Google, Mozilla, and Apple!

Of course, that’s what I do in a browser. On the smartphone I have some apps, including e.g. Radio Swiss Jazz, Radio Swiss Classic, Radio France, RaiPlay Sound, Nostalgie (Belgique, not France), Radioplayer.be (not available for D/L outside Belgium, and as horrendous as Radioplayer.de and Radioplayer.fr). Note that it’s much better to use the official websites to listen to Radio Swiss Jazz and Radio Swiss Classics, as they have nice playlists, so you know what’s going to be broadcast.

I don’t use any of the one-size-fits-all apps à la TuneIn, radio.net. Simple Radio, myTuner, VRadio, Replaio, etc. etc. Prior to 2023, I have used Online Radio Box, because I can sync the favorites between the app and the web browser; but in the end I decided such “universal” apps are annoying, if not for the stupid design, then for the fact that they don’t have all the streams of all the stations I once wanted to listen to, while at the same time being full of junk. I don’t care you have 55,000 streams, if an Internet radio station that has 32 web radios only has 17 in your app!

This being said, in the browser on a respective radio’s site or on the website of an aggregator, or in an app, I gave up listening to the hundreds of (duplicating) web radio streams belonging to NGroup: Nostalgie, NRJ, and Chérie, with different streams in different countries (e.g. France and Belgium). Yes, they really are so many, possibly over 1,000, that even the official websites don’t list all the different channels that sometimes still work despite not having any links to them from the official websites! This happens to other multichannel Internet radio stations, not only to those belonging to NGroup.

I also stopped using apps or websites that offer plenty of channels of jazz or classical music, such as JazzRadio.fr, the apps belonging to Digitally Imported Inc., and the so many other things I tried in the past. Too much is too much! I also stopped using Les Indés Radios: too buggy and slow!

UPDATE END-MAY 2023: I have eventually added a selection of 42 streams of Nostalgie France at the very end, right after the 11 streams of Nostalgie Deutschland (the 18 streams of Nostalgie Belgique remain towards the beginning). Everything belonging to NRJ Group (including Nostalgie, Chérie) is a huge mess, with very little logic in the classification of the hundreds of Internet radio streams they offer. (And some of their streams are seasonally, or temporary.) Either way, as I did that, the list includes 290 streams.

UPDATE END-SEPT. 2023: A few BBC streams added at the end; they do work outside Britain! (96k) 322 streams in all.

UPDATE OCT. 2023: Fixed some Belgian (and a few French) streams, with the help of Flux Radios. Also added some extra RTBF Musiq3 streams. After a bit of cleanup, there are 331 streams in all.

NOTE: For some reason, Radio Classique (France) refuses to work on Android: the server refuses the connection. I suppose they want to force people to use their official app on mobile. Des fils de pute. But there’s worse: I noticed that the streams for M Radio do work in a browser on a computer, but not on Android; and the official Android app also fails to work outside France! Using PIA VPN for Android to get a French IP suddenly unlocked the streams both in the app and in the browser!

2ND UPDATE OCT. 2023: It looks like Rai Radio‘s MP3 streams don’t work anymore outside Italy (unless you’re using a VPN), so I’ve added their AAC versions (as .m3u8), which work globally. 333 streams in all.

This being said, I could as well “function” offline with regard to music: on my smartphone I keep a collection of 2900 MP3 files totaling 9.9 GB! (This collection doesn’t include any jazz or classical.)