Can anyone recommend an alternative to Sonos/TuneIn for streaming radio station URLs, that handle it natively rather than via a 3rd party? Foreign radio stations are restricted in the UK and a great deal are not available on TuneIn. I’m thinking about Bose or Ruark, any suggestions welcome.
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It's a general UK user issue - no guarantee that any other system can work around this commercial court legislation.
Your only course of action before jumping into the frying pan is to ask existing users of other systems whether they are able to access stations you want.
Time consuming & a pain in the bum, but you could easily throw good money after bad.
I'll just illustrate that today Naim systems (not cheap) are unable to access all BBC streams.
Thanks for the response. Its unclear from their web sites how other systems do this. It seems unfair that TuneIn gets to control (and charge) for access. The URLs i had were working fine on Sonos before the blessed update :(
stonecoldbro wrote:
Thanks for the response. Its unclear from their web sites how other systems do this. It seems unfair that TuneIn gets to control (and charge) for access. The URLs i had were working fine on Sonos before the blessed update :(
Yes, discovering what radio database other systems use can be a task. Some claim to run their own database.
But, as far as I know, Sonos is the only system which offers several radio aggregators.
It's actually a unique selling point which most users (& even Sonos itself) seem unaware of.
There is much potential for a system like Sonos, such as including value-added features (eg. Music & Artist Info features, enabling music video features, etc.).
But NO, they've got themselves into a huge hole chasing after the high end headphone market. Stupid, or what?
Its all about the money. I’ll miss the days when a world of music awaited at my finger tips. It all just seemed so easy.
stonecoldbro wrote:
Its all about the money. I’ll miss the days when a world of music awaited at my finger tips. It all just seemed so easy.
Always has been
Actually, youtube is a great source of free music.
If Sonos built into its software a music video facility then we'd be talking - they just consistently ignore my suggestion.
The only way to guarantee access is to ensure the system allows you to add a stream URL of your choice. Sonos (via TuneIn) lets you do this, for the moment… But it has been made more difficult.
Once you have the source URL for the stream the only reason it wouldn't work is if the provider of the stream is running geo-blocking to lock it to a specific country. I can’t say I’ve noticed that yet for the stations i listen to.
I replied to this thread with some more details:
Many thanks, i’ll give your instructions from the thread a go. Is a paid subscription to TuneIn now required to set up the URLs in TuneIn/Sonos?
I’m up and running on a free TuneIn Account (i already had one - just had to reset the password). Got my most listened to URL back (TSONYC) and found another URL in those 2 sites mentioned in the thread. Back in a good place (for now) - over to you Sonos!. Thanks again for the advice
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