5FM on Ubuntu Gutsy

Listen to 5FM, an "ASX" Internet radio station feed, on Rhythmbox

[2008-02-29]

This morning I was listening to Virgin Radio on Ubuntu, and thought, "Hey, doesn't 5FM (a South African 'Top 40' radio station similar to the UK's Radio 1) have an Internet feed?". And indeed it does, but when I copied and pasted the URL into Rhythmbox, it didn't work for me.

And judging from Ubuntuforums, some other people had similar issues. The solution seems to be mplayer or VLC, but I don't want mplayer or VLC. I want Rhythmbox, dammit.

Here's how I got it working:


  1. Enable the Universe and Multiverse repositories (if you haven't already). help.ubuntu.com has excellent instructions.

  2. Install all the Bad and Ugly plugins (if you haven't already). You can use Synaptic, or you can do this in a terminal like so:
    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg 
    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse


  3. In Rhythmbox, add the following URL as a "New Internet Radio Station": 
    mms://196.35.64.36/5fm_22

  4. Right-click on your new station, choose "Properties", and give it a title, like "5FM".

Voila! Glorious South African rock, heavily diluted with more dodgy humour and R&B than you can shake a stick at!


P.S. Here are the URLs for a few others:

☙