Radio PRO - MP3 and OGG-streaming solution

Radio

Have you ever wanted to implement radio stations but don’t want (or can’t) pay an horrendous amount of money?
Whenever you like to provide good sound from famous artists for your games or apps, tune in on one of the uncountable Internet MP3 and OGG radio stations available for free.

Thanks to this asset, it is now possible for all Unity developers to listen to high quality sound without additional charges.

Features:
Radio stations

  • Thousands of internet radio stations: test the demo with your favourite channels

  • Receive music from your own server (e.g. Icecast, VLC server etc.)

  • Performance: very low impact on performance!

  • No limits: does survive changing scenes! The music is not interrupted even during load operations.

  • Good start: contains more than 1’500 high-quality radio stations

  • MP3 & OGG: Works with any MP3 and OGG settings (e.g. bit rate 32-500kbit/s)

  • Read the lyrics of the current track

  • Open Spotify with the current track

  • Information about the current and upcoming track (title, artist)

  • Details like downloaded data, total play time and requests

  • History of all played tracks per station

  • Tune into multiple stations at the same time (and blend between stations)

Flexible & expandable

  • Support for loading and saving of user-managed lists
  • Configurable via Shoutcast ID, PLS, M3U, XSPF and text files (external / local)
  • Easy adaptation and extension opportunities for existing radio stations
  • Pre-configured radio station providers for resources, files and URLs. Deliver the radios your way or implement your own provider (e.g. for XML, JSON).
  • Reads and saves M3U, PLS and XSPF files

Filter & order
Filter and order (ascending/descending) the radio stations by:

  • Name
  • URL
  • Format
  • Station URL
  • Bitrate
  • Genres
  • Rating
  • City
  • Country
  • Language

OnRadio integration
Access the full OnRadio API of the following services:

  • Playlist (matching songs/stations for a query)
  • Reco2 (matching or similar songs for a given artist)
  • Topsongs (top songs of a genre)
  • Station
  • DARStation (details of the current station)
  • SongArt (icon of the current song)

Query the songs/stations by:

  • Artist

  • Title

  • Callsign (Name)

  • Genre

  • City

  • Country

  • Language

Documentation & control

  • Test all radio stations inside the editor
  • Powerful API for maximum control
  • Detailed demo scenes
  • Comprehensive documentation and support
  • Full source code (including libraries)

Compatibility

  • Supports most build platforms (except WebGL & WSA)

  • Works with Windows, Mac and Linux editors

  • Compatible with Unity 2019.4 – 2023

  • Supports AR and VR

  • C# delegates and Unity events

  • Works with Online Check

  • PlayMaker actions

Integrations:

Some impressions:

Video:

AssetStore:
Radio PRO
Audio Suite Bundle
All Tools Bundle

Our other assets

Demos:
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android

Changes

Feel free to download and test it.
Any constructive comments are very welcome!

Cheers
Stefan

Are you a Shoutcast Partner? Do you have permission to distribute an API using their services?

If so… WOW this is HUGE!!!

Hi Shane

No, until now we aren’t an official partner of Shoutcast or any other radio platform.

We just wanted to implement a working MP3 streaming solution for Unity, so we created this asset (which was by the way not a trivial task to accomplish).
It’s more like an old-school radio - just a receiver to tune-in into the thousands of free available Internet radios.

We just added some stations for a demonstration - everybody can add their own. We didn’t implement an automated method for scraping lists of stations or websites, thought about it but were unsure about the legal ramifications.

I hope you still like the asset :slight_smile:

Have a nice weekend!

Cheers
Stefan

Looks cool! Could this also be used to play local mp3s? That would be an amazing option.
thanks!

Hi HeadTrip!

Thank you for your interest in our asset!

“Radio” is only for streaming music from an Internet source. BUT I’m currently working on an another unreleased asset (called “DJ” :slight_smile: ), which plays local and remote MP3-files inside your games/apps.

I’m also experimenting to add more supported formats (atm OGG) to both products.

I hope this answers your question.

Cheers
Stefan

Edit:
Radio supports now OGG

1 Like

Version 1.1.1 is submitted to the store and adds some minor improvements.

We also added a promo video:

Have a nice weekend!

Cheers
Stefan

This would be a great asset if it works so far, fast response with support too. So far so good. :slight_smile:

Hi Stone Legion

Don’t worry, it works without any problems (at least under U5.1).
I’m currently installing 5.2 and will test it there.

Please give me some time!

1 Like

I think you need to remove
"Reduced introductory price for a short time.
Grab it now!" from the asset store

the price is no longer set to introductory price right?

Hi TechiTech

Yes, sorry the description is wrong - I will change it now.
Thank you for mentioning this!

Cheers
Stefan

This looks really cool however im not too clear on the legal/licensing side of things. These radio stations probably (i may be wrong) wouldnt have license to play already licensed music tbrough another commercial medium - that is, just cause the station is free the music is not and i could imagine publishers having problems if their products were being used in a commercial product without some kind of contractual renumeration. Unless the music is in the public domain then whoop

1 Like

What lazygunn said. I’ll be all over this asset as soon as I know for certain that I won’t get my pants sued off for copyright infringement.

Hi lazygunn and nameis

Before we released this asset we looked up various legal stuff which we thought could be an issue (plus we wanted to be on the safe side).
Here is what we found:
According to the GT2b (Gemeinsamer Tarif 2b 2014-2017: Entschädigung für das Weitersenden von Radio- und Fernsehprogrammen und der darin enthaltenen Werke und Leistungen über IP-basierte Netze auf mobile Endgeräte oder auf PC-Bildschirme) which was approved by the “Eidgenössische Schiedskommission für die Verwendung von Urheberrechten und verwandten Schutzrechten” in 2013, it is perfectly legal to receive Internet radio stations, as long as you don’t send anything. Since our “Radio” asset functions only as a receiver, it is legal to use it.
The various internet Radio stations pay copyright bills, they are the ones sending the music. Again, since this Asset does NOT SEND any music but just RECEIVES it (including commercials of the various stations), there are no legal ramifications. Plus you can’t save or repeat any of the music, it’s just like listening to Radio stations the “old school” way. :slight_smile:

BUT: We talked to copyright experts here in Switzerland, and the legal documents linked above are also Swiss. Unfortunately, we can’t look up each and every country’s laws regarding this issue.

The following links to music licensing bodies may be of help:

USA:
www.loudcity.net
www.swcast.com
www.bmi.com
www.ascap.com
www.soundexchange.com

UK:
www.ppluk.com
www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk

Germany:
www.gema.de
www.gvl.de

France:
www.sacem.fr

Netherlands:
www.bumastemra.nl

South Africa:
www.samro.org.za

Hi, does it work on Android/IOS platform?

Hi Tarzan

Currently, it works only under Windows - but there it’s really great :slight_smile:

We’re evaluating different approaches for Mac- and mobile-support, but it’s a difficult and time consuming task. So don’t expect it to work on iOS/Android in the near future.

Cheers
Stefan

Edit:
Radio works on all platforms since 2.2.0!

We’ve created a short tutorial video:

Sounds great. If I ever need a radio in a game (right now my game is medieval fantasy), I will be sure to pick this up.

This is without doubt a big deal to many developers who produce social media apps / virtual world reality games and so fourth. Something that second life has done for years is to allow streaming of virtual DJs into their worlds through http server streams which i do believe this will allow?

Whats the time frames for seeing it appear in the asset store?

Hi GXMark

I will submit it tonight, so it should be available in the next few days.

Cheers
Stefan

P.S: all customers are welcome to send me the invoice via mail and get the newest version in return

Hi Stefan. I read through your entire thread and watched your videos. All my questions relate to Radio Pro.

FYI - I was glad to see you promoting Soma. They provide the best selection and quality of music services I have found.

We are building a virtual world, so our needs are different than someone adding radio to “a level.” Please keep this in mind.

I discussed adding radio with my technical staff yesterday. I learned we can have very concise distance control of balanced radio sound if we use 2D sound [which does not fade with distance], which is fine for music. This is important, because clubs and homes are often in pretty close proximity… both horizontally and vertically.

  1. My biggest concern is being able to play multiple different stations at that same time - in different areas, of course. We currently have at least 15 themed clubs and areas, from Tiki Exotica to folk, country, industrial, and more. Does Radio Pro support this?

  2. Can we set distances at each club (horizintally and vertically) that sound will be heard heard using Radio Pro?

  3. You mentioned development of a product for in-world broadcasting of our own stations. We have hired a radio disk jockey to put together our stations, and [regarding earlier posters’ concerns about licensing] since we are limiting “provision of music” to within our world, we come under a category of “playing music in our business,” NOT BROADCASTING, so the costs are minimal. But even this applies only to the music we provide, NOT the Shoutcast stations, which already pay royalties.

  4. In Phase One we are NOT providing member owned or controlled virtual properties. But this obviously is a significant focus of future development under Phase Two. Then we want to sell “radios,” jukeboxes, etc. that members can place on their property and tune to the station of their choice. However, we want to CONTROL access to stations. [There are some weird Shoutcast stations, usually masquerading as religious while actually promoting racism, bigotry and hatred. We want to keep these out of our world.]

Will Radio Plus support member controlled radios, at parameters we set?

Thank you, Stefan.