Playing PLS streams with Begalbone Black / MPD

[Oystein]

The title should probably be "Playing PLS streams with MPD" but because many readers were triggered to use MPD is becuase of the BeagleBone Black project here on CA so I included it in the title.

 

Since I had my music playing through this fine player I also added some radio stations in the NCMPC console via the "a" command (= add playlist) and typing the URL of the radiostation.

The station was then saved as a M3U file.

 

 

Some radiostations are m3u (mp3) streams but many others are .pls streams which I could not get to play.

I am probably not the only one with such issues and since I finally got it working and wanted to share it with you.

 

I use the site SHOUTcast Radio - Listen to Free Online Radio Stations as example because here all streams seams to be of the .pls type.

 

Looking for some Smooth Jazz I found "Bay Smooth Jazz Radio"

Moving my mouse over the link shows the URL in the bottom left corner.

 

 

When you right-click on the link and "save as" you can edit this file in Notepad and get this info:

 

[playlist]

numberofentries=4

File1=http://205.164.35.127:80

Title1=(#1 - 55/1000) 1.FM - BAY SMOOTH JAZZ RADIO

Length1=-1

File2=http://205.164.36.127:80

Title2=(#2 - 56/1000) 1.FM - BAY SMOOTH JAZZ RADIO

Length2=-1

File3=http://205.164.62.22:9010

Title3=(#3 - 272/1000) 1.FM - BAY SMOOTH JAZZ RADIO

Length3=-1

File4=http://205.164.62.15:9010

Title4=(#4 - 358/1000) 1.FM - BAY SMOOTH JAZZ RADIO

Length4=-1

Version=2

 

I picked the first available IP address 205.164.35.127:80 and saved this one in the Jazz.m3u file in the MPD playlist directory. I guess the other IP adresses will work too but did not try it. Please feel free to try yourself .. ;-)

 

 

 

This is how it looks like in MPad:

 

[Oystein]

Now that I am trying to add more radio stations via other websites too I noticed not all stations are saved as IP adresses but some as URL's.

 

The way to solve this is to ping the URL to get the IP address in return.

Be aware that you only ping the basic URL:

 

 

Replace the URL with the IP address and the radio station plays fine.