Many people we have spoken to have a yearning to listen to radio on their iPhone. This is not possible from a hardware point of view- there is no radio receiver in the iPhone. However you can download apps which will let you listen to radio stations using internet feeds.

One such example which we like is FStream. It is a free app, and you will need to know the address for the radio stations you wish to listen to:
http://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/fstream/id289892007?mt=8

However we have gathered a few examples:

RTE 1:
http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/live/radio/radio1.asx

RTE 2FM:
mms://live1.rte.ie/wmtencoder/1718.wma

RTE Lyric:
mms://live1.rte.ie/wmtencoder/1920.wma

Newstalk:
http://newstalk.fmstreams.com:8080/listen.pls

BBC 5 Live:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r5l.asx

BBC 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r4lw.asx

There is a more complete list of BBC channels are this site.


In FStream, tap on Favourites, and then on the Edit button. Then you will see an option to "add new webradio"- tap on it and enter the name of the station, the address (such as the one above), and for the "encoding" use "WindowsLatin1" from the list.

Just remember that if you use this outside a WiFi zone, you will be charged or you will use up some of your data allocation.

Simon Spence/2010

Tags: iPhone | iPod