I have just finished installing Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin). One of the first post-installation job for me is setting up the default Music Player Rhythmbox (creating play lists, installing necessary GStreamer Plugins (which is absolutely painless) and adding Internet Radio Stations). One of my favorite Radio Stations is The BBC Asian Network.
Here is how to add all the available BBC Radio Stations to Rhythmbox in two steps.
Step 1: Choose Your Favorite Station:
The only thing you need is the web link to your favorite BBC Station. Choose the link for your favorite Station from the following list. Don’t click on the link! Yeah, just right click on it and Copy the URL. If you are using Firefox, right click on the link and select ‘Copy Link Location‘.
♠ BBC National Radio:
Radio 1 : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r1.asx
Radio 1 Xtra : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r1x.asx
Radio 2 : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r2.asx
Radio 3 : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3.asx
Radio 4 : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r4.asx
Radio 4 Longwave : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r4lw.asx
Radio 4 Extra : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r4x.asx
Radio 5 Live : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r5l.asx
Radio5 Live Sport Extra : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r5lsp.asx
Radio 6 Music : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r6.asx
Asian Network : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/ran.asx
♠ BBC World Service Radio:
World Service: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/meta/tx/nb/live_infent_au_nb.asx
World Service-English News : http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/meta/tx/nb/live_news_au_nb.asx
♠ Science & Health:
Discovery : http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/meta/tx/nb/discovery_au_nb.asx
Science in Action : http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/meta/tx/nb/sia_au_nb.asx
This list is incomplete. If your favorite Station is not listed here, no worries. You will definitely find them in the following two links. Yes, you will have to click on these two links.
Link 1 : World Service Stations : http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/institutional/2009/10/091029_internetradiomobilelinks.shtml
On this page, find your favorite BBC World Service Station, right click on the corresponding link and copy its URL location.
Link 2 : Nations & Local Stations: http://faq.external.bbc.co.uk/questions/radio/online_radiohowto
On this page, you will find links to Nations Radio Stations like Radio Scotland and Local Radio Stations like BBC Oxford. Go to the section ‘IP Streaming Services‘, find your favorite Station in one of the tables. Right click on the corresponding link in the ‘Windows Media Live‘ column.
Step 2 : Add Link to Rhythmbox Radio:
Once you have copied the URL of the Radio Station, open Rhythmbox and press Cntrl+I, you will see that the URL you copied in the first step is automatically added in the text box of the pop up window. Click ‘Add‘. That’s it. Double click the newly added Radio Station and Enjoy!
To change the title of the station to a recognizable one, right click on the title and click ‘Properties‘.
dnpashilkar 
Brilliant Works a treat thanks
THANK YOU!
Yes, love it – great, works perfectly!
Fantastic! Thank you.
nice one. Thanks!
Thank you for that.Just the job.
Thank you. I wish Rhythmbox had the same range of radio stations as itunes so we don’t have to know exact URLs for the feeds
This works exactly as described on 10.04 Lucid as well. Thanks.
Wow – that’s perfect! Funny that the BBC can’t explain this – they sem to know nothing about Ubuntu!
Amazing, thanks for this. Got me round the problem of flash streams never loading in my browser.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Works as I eveer wanted.
Thank you so much! I now no longer have to struggle to get BBC’s useless Radioplayer to work.
Hi dnpashilkar,
I was really loooking for this and I found your website. I am Using Ubuntu 14.04 ‘Trusty Tahr’. I followed the same procedure but it always says “Playback Error, No resource found”
Please help me if you can.
Thanks in advance,
Aanib
Try KRadio4. It is a KDE app, but it should work fine with the Unity Desktop. It is free and open source. To install it, type the following command in a terminal window and hot the return key
sudo apt-get install kradio4
Probably the best radio application for any platform, ever.
Sadly it seems that ALL the BBC world service URL quoted in the article are now broken.
To be clear: the national and local station URL’s work fine. But all the World Service ones are broken.
Ha! After digging around I just found a URL for a World Service stream that does work. Seems BBC is deliberately making it difficult to listen to the World service with anything other than its bloody awful iPlayer. Fortunately, it seems Aunty Beeb overlooked this one:-
http://wsdownload.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/meta/live/shoutcast/mp3/eieuk.pls
The stream is 48kbs mono MPEG stream. Its not great, a bit warbly at times, but it’s better than nothing. HTH. G. 🙂