More tools to listen to radio in Linux

At previous article I told you about a tool called PyRadio. Next, I will talk about more tools to listen to radio in Linux. This is one of the areas where free software offers us more alternatives.

Of course the easiest option is to use the web player of each station, however, for reasons of privacy, memory consumption or privacy.

How to get multimedia links

The tricky thing when using alternative tools is getting the specific streaming links. In some sites, just by placing the pointer over the player and copying the link we can use it in our preferred tool.

An easy way to to find the links is to use the developer tools that browsers have. At least Firefox and the ones based on Chrome.

bing browser

1. In the upper bar, click on the three dots (…)
2. Press on More tools.
3. Press on Development tools.
4. Click on the Wi-Fi icon
5. Start the player.
6. In the lower window on the right side you will see the file being played appear. Just copy and paste it into the online playback window of the playback app.

Brave Browser

1. Click on the list icon.
2. Click on More tools.
3. Click on Developer Tools.
4. Click on the arrows in the tab menu until you find the one that says Network o Red.
5. Start the player.
6. Brave shows more files in this step than Bing so you may have to copy multiple links to find the right one.

Chromium/Chrome browser

1. Click on the icon of the 3 vertical points in the top bar.
2. Click on More tools.
3. Click on Developer Tools.
4. Click on the tab Network.
5. Start the player.
6. Click and copy the links to the media files until you find the right one.

Firefox browser

1. Click on the list icon in the top bar.
2. Click on More tools.
3. Click on Development tools.
4. Click on Red.
5. We start the player.
6. We select the multimedia file and copy the link.

This works with radios that do not encrypt their transmissions.s, but not with the audio and video streaming sites that do.

There is a slightly more complex way to do this than by looking in the source code. Browsers include a way to view it, but we won't cover how to do it as it requires knowledge of HTML.
More tools to listen to radio in Linux

Once we have the link we need a tool to reproduce it. As I have been saying in the previous article, there are several. These are some of them:

VLC

Videolan's all-terrain player cannot be missing from any multimedia software collection and it will not be missing in this one.

The easiest way to play a radio is to write in terminal
vlc enlace_de_streaming
To do it from the graphical interface, click on Medium/Open Network Broadcast.

Although it is not necessary, we have some extra options such as recording the radio. For this we select Convert in the drop-down menu and choose the name and location of the recording.

short wave

In the days when there was no Internet and we had to pass the time until the dinosaurs allowed us to get out of the caves, short wave radios (Short wave) were the way to listen to live sounds from other countries. This program, part of the GNOME project, gives us access to more than 25000 issuers from around the world iincluded in the database of Radio-Browser.info

The official package is in format Flatpak and there is an unofficial version in the Snap store..

Radio

As you will realize from the (lack of) originality in the title, it is an application without too many pretensions with a very simple interface and that also uses the database of the previous application. The reason why I include it in the list is because it incorporates the possibility of recording the station that we are listening to.
Installs from the flatpack store