Tune-In blocking foreign radio stations in the UK Master thread

  • 13 September 2020
  • 101 replies
  • 17284 views

Userlevel 7
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As Sonos don’t seem to want to, lets try and consolidate the TuneIn UK problem into one master thread.

What we know: starting last Thursday, TuneIn in the UK started blocking all foreign radio stations. They did this because of a lawsuit they lost in November 2019.

Some have also claimed that Sonos Radio is also affected.

The known work-arounds are:

  • Add the direct streaming url of the station to the Sonos system (only available to PC and Mac users detailed here
  • Try a different radio station aggregator (eg radio.com)

 


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101 replies

Userlevel 7
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Details of the lawsuit are here: https://torrentfreak.com/tunein-radio-infringed-sony-warners-copyrights-high-court-rules-191101/

Userlevel 2

If you live in the UK, try finding the foreign TuneIn stations on MyTuner Radio which is available on Sonos in settings under Services & Voice (scroll down and add it). I found most of them still work.

Thanks. Have tried the MyTuner Radio work around but the stations still seem to be blocked. Will try the URL route.

Userlevel 3
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Sibex .

last time i checked My tuner radio was working fine with worldwide connections . Does anybody know if Sonos are doing anything about this, or even look on it as a problem?

Came here to say the same thing -- if you can get hold of the stream link you can add the stations as above.

For example, SomaFM have added their links

https://somafm.com/listen/uktunein.html

Some of my fav stations don’t seem to have this link - get in touch with the station to see if they can help.

SomaFM were incredibly helpful as an example for me.

Userlevel 2
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Ah so glad I found this.  Thought it was something I’d done wrong, or that sonos was cutting streams to force us to move to S2

Sadly mytuner radio no longer supports the US stations i need. Its down to URL’s. Lets hope that works.

The US station that I enjoy listening to - Kost 103.5 - has stopped working this morning via the direct streaming URL.  It still works from a web browser using the same URL but the direct-via-TuneIn isn’t working.

 

Is there any other app/service that will stream from a URL?

 

(Streaming URL if anybody is interested is https://stream.revma.ihrhls.com/zc193 ) 

follow these instructions 

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/260?language=en_US#:~:text=Select%20Manage%20and%20Add%20Radio,added%20station%20will%20be%20listed.

using the direct link you have posted

Userlevel 1

Thank you to all contributors (here and on the original threads) for your helpful suggestions and links.  I have now tried using Mytuner Radio (and others) and have managed to add some of my original stations back, but some are not available, so I’ve been adding these manually.

Unfortunately, the manually added ones get added without the station ‘picture’, but at least my wife and I can continue to listen to our favourite stations once more.

However, having read about the original court case I wonder how much longer these other ‘consolidators’ will be able to continue to stream non-UK stations to us here in the UK; so we might all end up having to put them in manually!  Further, as Sony/Warner were successful in the UK, will they now try the same thing elsewhere in the world and thus prevent others?

I do continue to think that TuneIn owed a duty of care to its listeners (including through Sonos) and should have informed us - as they knew this was coming as long ago as last November!  Sonos, too, should have been aware (as they make the TuneIn service available on their products) and should have notified us UK users that this was going to happen and provided us with better help to continue to listen to our favourite stations.

Finally though, at least I can continue to use my Sonos system for one of the reasons I bought it originally. Thanks, contributors, for your help.

 

When i add an URL and try to play it I get the message ‘The song is not encoded correctly.’ This is via Live365. Any ideas.

Userlevel 7
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When i add an URL and try to play it I get the message ‘The song is not encoded correctly.’ This is via Live365. Any ideas.


Your URL is probably wrong. It needs to be the actual stream, not an HTML page, which is the usual mistake.

Thanks but how do i get to the URL for Live365 - any ideas. What i used was the url i saw when playing the station on Live365 but that is obviously wrong.

follow these instructions 

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/260?language=en_US#:~:text=Select%20Manage%20and%20Add%20Radio,added%20station%20will%20be%20listed.

using the direct link you have posted

 

Unfortunately the instructions use TuneIn to access the stream - this is what has stopped working this morning :( 

Restricted URL. The streaming URL requires a login to access it or includes an expiring token in the URL. Some streaming hosts (ex. Live365, myradiostream, Listen2myradio) offer a premium service that is required in order to use their streams outside of their own platform.

Userlevel 7
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Thanks but how do i get to the URL for Live365 - any ideas. What i used was the url i saw when playing the station on Live365 but that is obviously wrong.


Do you mean “Live 365 Dev Radio”? I can’t play that from TuneIn but I am in the USA, so that might be an unrelated issue.

Userlevel 7
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So i cannot get my favourite USA station on Sonos Radio, TuneIn, My Radio Player or via an URL.

Sonos is doing a good job on this one! 

Can anyone help me. Up until the last week I’ve been listening to Mix fm from Iheart radio on me of the Sonos radio stations All of a sudden it has stopped. I press play and it goes back to stop. On many other sonos radio stations this is also happening please help! 

follow these instructions 

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/260?language=en_US#:~:text=Select%20Manage%20and%20Add%20Radio,added%20station%20will%20be%20listed.

using the direct link you have posted

 

Unfortunately the instructions use TuneIn to access the stream - this is what has stopped working this morning :( 

If i use the tunein app to look for the stations I am using they do not work, but following those instruction have worked for me.

Once you have added the stream you need to navigate via the app to:

Browse (note icon at the bottom of the app) >Tunein>My Radio stations

You don’t access them from the My sonos page.

I am accessing blocked streams on my sonos device right now as it is a direct link.

*UPDATE*

I used the link you posted - https://stream.revma.ihrhls.com/zc193 and I can confirm I can listen to this station if you follow the steps here.

Came here to say the same thing -- if you can get hold of the stream link you can add the stations as above.

For example, SomaFM have added their links

https://somafm.com/listen/uktunein.html

Some of my fav stations don’t seem to have this link - get in touch with the station to see if they can help.

SomaFM were incredibly helpful as an example for me.

Thanks for this. Couldn’t work out how to get Groove Salad from somaFM playing until I read this. 

Userlevel 3
Badge +1

So the question is what is Sonos going to do about this ? Sonos radio was launched as a selling point to update kit get us to go to the S2 app, and now it's effectively useless for what a lot of us want it to do . Sonos must have known that tune-in had an ongoing court case that had the possibility of being found against them ? And yet they still copied it or had some sort of agreement with tune-in to use their system. Sonos don't seem to be saying a lot about this either, but after the May/June launch of S2 when Sonos radio was used as a selling point to the great new future of Sonos listening, it hasn't turned out so well. If you launch a service with a fanfare you better be able to make it work .

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

So the question is what is Sonos going to do about this ? Sonos radio was launched as a selling point to update kit get us to go to the S2 app, and now it's effectively useless for what a lot of us want it to do . Sonos must have known that tune-in had an ongoing court case that had the possibility of being found against them ? And yet they still copied it or had some sort of agreement with tune-in to use their system. Sonos don't seem to be saying a lot about this either, but after the May/June launch of S2 when Sonos radio was used as a selling point to the great new future of Sonos listening, it hasn't turned out so well. If you launch a service with a fanfare you better be able to make it work .


Sonos are saying literally nothing about this. So I am guessing lawyers are involved, which doesn’t bode well for UK users.

I’m glad i found this thread i have literally been going crazy the last few days deleting and reinstalling the app. 

Another problem i have encountered is i can’t play my own music (through my PC)  it loads the music on to the S2 app but then when i click on a folder it says “no selections are available” just wondering if anyone else is having this issue?

That issue will be local to your system but I suggest you start a new thread so that this thread can remain on topic.