Radio stream tester
Paste your stream URL to see whether it will play on a website: the platform behind it, the audio format, the bitrate, HTTPS, and whether track titles come through. If it passes, you'll hear it playing in a real RadioSiteMaker station template.
What the tester checks
- Reachability. The tester connects like a listener's browser would and reads the response headers and the first few kilobytes of audio. It never records the stream.
- Platform. It recognises the URL patterns of the hosts RadioSiteMaker reads track data from: Icecast, SHOUTcast, AzuraCast, HLS, Radio.co, RadioKing, Live365, laut.fm, AIIR, Citrus3, Centova Cast and Caster.fm.
- Format. MP3, AAC, Ogg/Opus and HLS play in current browsers. A URL that returns a web page instead of audio is the most common mistake: it is the player page, not the stream.
- HTTPS. Websites are served over HTTPS, and browsers treat an
http://stream on an HTTPS page as mixed content. They try to upgrade the request to HTTPS and block the audio if that fails. - Now-playing data. The tester runs the same metadata lookup a RadioSiteMaker site uses: the host's status page first (such as Icecast's
status-json.xslor SHOUTcast's/stats), then the title embedded in the stream itself. - CORS (HLS only). Outside Safari, HLS is played by JavaScript, which needs the server to allow cross-origin requests.
Where to find your stream URL
Your stream URL is the address of the audio itself, not of your host's player page. Look in your streaming host's dashboard under "stream URL", "listen URL", "mount point" or "direct link". It often ends in /stream, /live, a mount name such as /radio.mp3, or .m3u8 for HLS. A .pls or .m3u download link works too: the tester opens it and finds the stream inside.
For host-by-host details, see Integrations. If the stream plays but something is wrong on your website, the player troubleshooting guide goes through each symptom.
Common questions
Why does my stream play in VLC but fail here?
Desktop players accept http:// streams and formats browsers do not. The tester checks what a web browser on an HTTPS page will do, which is stricter.
Why is no track title shown?
Either your encoder is not sending titles, or your host publishes them at a separate address. In RadioSiteMaker you can enter that address as a "now-playing URL" in settings.
Do you store the URL I test?
No. The URL is used for the test and discarded. Analytics only record that the tool was used and whether the stream passed.
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