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Not sure if this is the right place to ask.

I am wondering if audio streams from internet radio stations can (and do) contain song information such as title and artist? I suppose there are many formats that may or may not support this, so 'Yes but only if x and y' would be a valid answer.

Related: If this is possible, and the info is there, is for instance VLC able to show it?

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Apparently the information is there.

As regarding VLC, see the bug-report
No Metadata (song title / artist / ..) on playback of online radio stream.

The answer by the developer from 2022 was :

ICY metadata is an ancient hack basically as there is no other way to do streaming metadata for MP3 streams and it is what the stream uses, but we do not yet support it over https. I did not have time yet to fix it.

This metadata support may or may not arrive in VLC sometime in the future.

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  • I should have tried other players before asking ;-) Vlc on Android does show artist and title! So yes, the info is indeed there
    – Berend
    Sep 22 at 16:07
  • So the developer has already added this feature. Good news.
    – harrymc
    Sep 22 at 16:14
  • Yes, just not to the windows version afaics
    – Berend
    Sep 22 at 16:14
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https://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Defined/dp/B0BMKZCKTF?th=1

Here is 1 potential hardware option. Depending on what you buy an antenna may or may not be included and may have to be purchased separately.

You want a generic one like the rtlsdr as it uses a generic driver that nrsc5 is compatible.

rtlsdr

The answer is YES, and it can contain a bunch of other information.

My local broadcast radio stations are in HD radio(digital) and all contain a bunch of metadata.

You may need a SDR (software defined radio) on a PC to receive and decode it.

Also you area need to have the digital radio signal instead of the old school analog. However, at least in the US that is usually the case.

When I do this on linux, I get:

  1. song name
  2. album art usually lowish quality <10kb or less normally.
  3. low quality weather maps (think 16 or 256 color) enter image description here
  4. Text info including the GPS location of the radio towers.

DopplerWeatherRadarProtocolVersionID="1.0" DWR_Area_ID= StationList= Coordinates="(###,###)";"(###,###)" Legend_Rain="(1,(0,255,0))";"(2,(0,170,0))";"(3,(0,102,0))";"(4,(255,238,0))";"(5,(238,119,0))";"(6,(221,0,0))" Legend_MixIce="(1,(255,170,255))";"(2,(244,85,176))" Legend_Snow="(1,(0,255,255))";"(2,(0,0,255))" CopyrightNotice="Copyright © 2023 iHeartMedia, Inc. All rights reserved."

Note: I deleted the GPS location and station list, for privacy.

TrafficMapProtocolVersionID="1.3" TrafficMapID="0" StationList=" " NumRows="3" NumColumns="3" NumTransmittedTiles="9" >CoordinatesRow1="" CoordinatesRow2="" CoordinatesRow3="" BackgroundRGBColor="(194,187,96)" CopyrightNotice="Copyright © 2014 iHeartMedia, Inc. All rights reserved."

*2 I have seen a few up to 15kb, but this is rare.

https://github.com/theori-io/nrsc5

This software will decode and saving into file all the available metadata.

I have tested the software in linux, and know first hand what it outputs.

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  • 1
    What's this, some kind of dab receiver? I was thinking more of internet-radio streaming
    – Berend
    Sep 22 at 19:11
  • 1
    Yes it is a kind of dab, it's called SDR or software define radio that can listen on a wide variety of frequencies. You said radio station not streaming radio, so that is how I answered the question. Your standard digital FM signal has this metadata now-a-days.
    – cybernard
    Sep 22 at 19:17
  • I added the internet-radio tag. But that's ok, I just learned something new.
    – Berend
    Sep 22 at 20:11

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