Internet radio, often referred to as web radio, streaming radio, or online radio, is a digital audio service that streams over the Internet.
So, what makes internet radio so appealing? For starters, there are no sign-up or subscription fees, making it accessible to everyone. You can tune into a vast array of stations from around the globe. Whether you’re a fan of classical music, pop, folk, or even news and talk shows, there’s something for everyone, no matter where you are, as long as you have an internet connection. Internet radio covers every format you’d find on traditional broadcast stations, providing endless listening options.
Transistor is a GUI internet radio player for Linux. It’s free and open source software.
Installation
I evaluated Transistor using the Manjaro distribution. There’s an AUR package available which I installed with Pamac, a GUI package manager.
The build proceeds with no issues.
In Operation
Here’s an image of Transistor in operation. I’ve created my own library with some vibrant stations.
Any internet radio player worth its salt needs an easy way to add stations. And that doesn’t mean having to manually enter URLs. Fortunately Transistor gives you easy access to more than 50,000 stations via its Discover and Search functionality.
Speaking of the search functionality, it’s quite basic and not particularly efficient at finding stations. Things like the lack of fine-tuning searches, and being able to refine via genre.
I like the responsive design which means the player works well on small and large screens.
Summary
Transistor is a fully-fledged internet radio app. It rivals Tuner and Shortwave as my GUI internet radio player of choice. Its notifications can be a bit spammy for certain stations. Fortunately notifications can be turned off in the Settings section.
The search functionality is too basic for my needs. But it’s still very good software and warrants my firm recommendation.
For other free and open source GUI internet radio apps, check out this roundup.
Website: invent.kde.org/saurov/transistor
Support:
Developer: Yuri Saurov
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Transistor is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.