Monthly Archives: August 2009

Live365 Stream URLs

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Live365.com doesn’t make it easy for casual users to figure out how to play a radio station with anything but the Live365 website. There is a URL you can use to directly access the MP3 stream, it’s just hard to find. If you want to play a stream in iTunes, Winamp, or on your iPhone, XBOX Media Center, or any other compatible device you’ll need the direct stream URL.

The following link is a bookmarklet that you can use to get the stream URL for any Professional Live365 station. Make sure the station says “professional”, or the stream won’t work. Note: Streamly Radio, my fantastic iPhone radio application, can play non-professional Live365 stations if you have a Live365 username and password.

In Firefox and Safari you can left click (keep the button down) and drag this link to your bookmark toolbar. In Internet Explorer you can right click and add the link to your favorites.

Live 365 Stream URL

Now when you visit a Live365 professional station page, like Houndstooth, you can click the saved bookmarklet and it will give you the stream URL.

Bookmarklet

Update 11/25/2010: This post has been updated to work after Live365 refreshed their site design. Remove and re-create the bookmarklet if you added it to your browser before 11/25/2010.

Background iPhone streaming radio with Safari

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Since the iPhone only allows one program to be running at a time users of streaming radio applications can’t read their email or look at Twitter while listening to music. The new iPhone OS 3.0 has added a feature that helps make this possible, although it’s not perfect.

If you open a compatible streaming radio link in Safari on the iPhone it will open a QuickTime player that will play the stream. Since Safari is allowed to run in the background, you can press the home button and start up other applications while the stream is still playing in Safari. The downside is that you can’t do anything else in Safari while the stream is playing.

Try it. Click on the Indie 103.1 playlist URL or the Houndstooth Radio stream URL from your iPhone.

I’ll add a feature to Stream.ly in the next update to do this automatically from the application. I’ll also update the Stream.ly website so you can browse the station directory from Safari on the phone and listen to a station without needing the application itself. The application adds a lot of nice features though. :)

UPDATE: It’s still in a “beta” stage, but you can now browse around the Stream.ly Radio web directory and play stations in Safari from this URL. iPhone only for now.