BBC Radio Streams

BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering the majority of musical genres, as well as local radio stations covering local news, affairs and interests. It also oversees online audio content.

How to listen to BBC Radio
The easiest way to listen to BBC Radio is through the BBC Sounds app on Android, iOS and on many Smart TVs, or through the BBC website.
See: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds

BBC Radio is also available through the airable.fm internet radio portal. Please note, that some older Internet radios may not support the technology used for BBC radio streams.
See: https://airable.fm

BBC Radio is available on the myTuner app on Android, iOS Microsoft Windows and on Smart TVs. On the myTuner website BBC streams open on an external BBC player which requires you to login.
See: https://mytuner-radio.com

Technical Information

AAC – Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.

ADTS – Audio Data Transport Stream
A file with the ADTS file extension is an Audio Data Transport Stream file. This file format stores sections of an audio file in various frames, each of which include the audio data and header information. AAC files streamed online are often transferred in the ADTS format.

HLS – HTTP Live Streaming
HLS, or “HTTP Live Streaming,” is a modern streaming protocol designed for efficient delivery of audio and video to mobile devices. Developed by Apple and first introduced in 2009, HLS has evolved over time with the addition of various new features. It is the most widely used protocol by video streaming platforms, but in this article, we will focus on how HLS functions for audio streaming and explore its advantages for radio broadcasters.

At its core, HLS operates by breaking an audio or video stream into small segments, typically a few seconds long, and serving these as individual files over HTTP or HTTPS. A playlist file (.m3u8) lists the available segments, each represented by a URL. When an HLS-compatible player streams content, it regularly reads this playlist, downloads the most recent segments, and seamlessly reassembles them into a continuous audio or video experience.

Bitrates
Data compression is also applied in ‘Internet Radio’ streaming. When audio is compressed in such a way through a streams encoder (regardless of the format the audio’s signal is coming from) the lower the stream bitrate used, the lower this will be in the occurring sound quality.

BBC Radio is available in the following bitrates:
Stereo AAC, 96 KBit/s (available worldwide)
Stereo AAC, 128 KBit/s
Stereo AAC, 320 KBit/s
Stereo AAC, 48 KBit/s

Audio codec: aac v2
Better than FM quality requires 56-96 kbps
Similar to FM quality requires 40-64 kbps
Acceptable, worse than FM 24-48 kbps
(Based on stereo services)

See: https://garfnet.org.uk/cms/2023/10/29/latest-bbc-hls-radio-streams/

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