radioko

How we check stations

Every night radioko rebuilds its station list from public data and from anonymous signals sent by the player. This page explains which stations make it in, where their details come from, and when a station is hidden.

Which stations are listed

  • The station is in Radio Browser for one of our countries, and its stream passed Radio Browser's most recent test.
  • The stream uses HTTPS and an audio format browsers can play (MP3, AAC, Ogg/Opus or HLS). Plain HTTP streams are left out because browsers block them on secure pages, and so are TV channels that stream video.
  • Duplicate entries (the same name, or the same stream) are merged into one, keeping the most-listened copy.
  • Stations whose owners asked to be removed are left out.

Each station keeps its address on radioko for good: if a station disappears from the data, its page is removed and its address is never given to another station.

Where the profile comes from

Frequencies, call signs, owners, founding years, websites and social links come from Wikidata. A Wikidata entry is attached to a station only when the match is certain: the same website and a matching name, the same call sign confirmed by the frequency, or the same unique name. When two entries could fit, we attach neither. A themed or regional stream of a larger station (for example a "Classic Rock" channel) only gets the details that belong to the whole brand, such as the owner and website, never the frequency.

When a station is hidden

When a station starts or fails to start, the player sends a signal saying which station it was and whether it played; our server stores it with the time and the visitor's country, without IP address or cookie. If a station collects many failures, our server tries the stream itself once a day. A station whose stream fails on three days in a row is hidden from all lists until a later check succeeds. A refused or unreadable answer (some stations block other countries) never counts as a failure.

The "Stream not working?" link on a station page sends the same kind of anonymous signal.

Corrections and removal

To correct a station's details, fix them at the source (Radio Browser or Wikidata) or contact us. Station owners can ask for their station to be removed; we handle such requests within 48 hours.