21 Best Free and Open Source GUI Internet Radio Software

Internet radio (also known as web radio, net radio, streaming radio, and online radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet.

Why do we like internet radio? There are no sign-up or subscription charges. There’s a huge range of stations available from around the world. If you like classical music, pop music, folk music, news, talk radio, and much more, internet radio has something for everyone wherever you live (providing you have a net connection). Internet radio offers every format that is available on traditional broadcast radio stations.

There’s a wide range of free and open source software that lets you listen to internet radio. With so many different possibilities available it’s easy to get lost trying to find the right one for you.

Here’s our verdict on the best GUI-based internet radio software. Features that are highly desirable include, but are not limited to, access to the community radio browser API or similar, recording streams, the ability to import/export a list of radio stations, good search functionality, station logos, reordering stations, as well as an attractive and easy-to-use interface. Other factors that help to determine our rating include things like the program’s stability, speed, memory usage, and more.

Only open source software is eligible for inclusion.

We must stress that the rating for each program represents our assessment of the program’s capabilities as an internet radio program. Many of the programs are not dedicated internet radio software. And the fact we’ve scored some programs (fairly) lowly isn’t indicative of their qualities as a music player. For example, Tauon Music Box is our recommended open source music player. It’s truly an amazing music player. While recent releases have added more internet radio functionality to Tauon, there’s plenty of scope for further improvements in this area.

Terminal-based internet radio apps are covered in this separate article.

Let’s have a look at the programs in more detail. For most of the software, we’ve written a detailed review. All of the programs offer a graphical interface, unless otherwise stated.

Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more.