Where the stations come from, and why a few won’t play

Every station in the app comes from Radio Browser: an open list of internet radio stations, kept by volunteers, that anybody can add to. We did not make it, and we are glad it exists.

Our own copy, checked every night

Every night we make our own copy of that list, and every search, every country page and every shelf in the app answers from it. That keeps the app quick, and it spares the volunteers’ servers from being asked on every keystroke.

The copy also lets us leave things out: stations whose stream no longer answers, and stations only offered without the secure connection a browser needs. That hides about a quarter of the list, on purpose. If our copy cannot answer, the app says so instead of guessing.

Why a station can still fail

A station can go off air after last night’s check, or offer a secure stream with a certificate made out to a different address, which your browser refuses before our app gets a say.

When a station fails, you can report it, and a station you reported stops being suggested to you. What we will not do is send the audio through our own servers to make it play. That would turn a directory into a rebroadcaster, and it is not our stream to rebroadcast.