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:

• PlayMaker
  
• Audio Visualizer
  
• Visualizer Studio
  
• Complete Sound Suite
• Apollo Visualizer Kit
• Rhythm Visualizator
• Volumetric Audio

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

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" ), 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

 

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.

 

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!

 

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

 

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.

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

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.

 

Hi Vontarga

Thank you very much for your interest in "Radio"!

I'll try to answer your questions the best I can:

1. As you can verify with our demos, it's absolutely possible to play many stations at the same time. The only limitation is the Internet-connection.
2. The output is routed to an AudioSource which has "Spatial Blend" for 3D positioning (like distance etc.). But atm, we use OnAudioFilterRead which "ruins" the effect (distance is working). This will be fixed in the upcoming release 2.3.0
3. We are currently working on an other asset which would allow you to play your own (local) music. It will also have a "setlist" function and many more gimmicks for personalization. I think this is what you are referring to. If everything goes according to plan it will be in the Asset Store in a few weeks. Also, with the "Radio" asset you can provide music in your own network by securing the endpoints (e.g. with HTTP-authentication).
4. The implementation for access control is up to you. In our case, we simply read the current stations from a file on our web server. But you could handle this with an API and a real "webapp" behind it.

Just contact me if you have further questions.

cheers,
Stefan

 

Thank you for the prompt, detailed answers, Stefan.

Reid

 

Hi Stefan,
Does this asset support pandora.com Internet radio? Thanks for any info.

 

Hi reddo

Thank you for your interest in "Radio"!

Unfortunately, I can't access pandora.com from Switzerland during licensing constraints...

But as long as you can access an OGG or MP3 stream it should work.
You can test it with the demo app ("SimpleUI"-scene) by replacing the url etc. with the desired values.

I hope this helps!


So long,
Stefan

 

Thanks for the quick reply Stefan.
The client I'm working with has the backing of Pandora so just looking for possibilities in regards to streaming from Pandora in a mobile app.
I'll give the demo app a go.
Cheers
Red

 

Hi Red

Please let me know if it worked.
And if so: could you please send me the station you've tested (with the URL) via PM? Thank you.


Cheers
Stefan

 

Hi Stefan,
Just bought this. It's good. Built an osx standalone and it works.

Is their a demo scene that shows how to use this across different scenes, so the audio keeps playing?
If not, documentation?
That would be quite helpful.

What's your rough eta on your dj app so players can hear their own music?
Will it work on OSX?

thanks!

 

Hi shwa

Thank you for buying our asset "Radio"!

To survive a scene switch create the following script "SurviveSceneSwitch.cs" in your project:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3.  
4. public class SurviveSceneSwitch : MonoBehaviour {
5.  
6.    public List<GameObject> Survivors = new List<GameObject>(); //any objects, like RadioPlayers
7.  
8.    private Transform tf;
9.  
10.    void Awake () {
11.       tf = transform;
12.       DontDestroyOnLoad(tf.root.gameObject);
13.    }
14.  
15.     void Start () {
16.       foreach (GameObject go in Survivors) {
17.          go.transform.SetParent(tf);
18.       }
19.     }
20.  
21.     void Update () {
22.       if (Time.frameCount % 150 == 0) { //ensure every 150 frames that the parent is still this object
23.          foreach (GameObject go in Survivors) {
24.             go.transform.SetParent(tf);
25.          }
26.       }
27.    }
28. }

After that, open your scene from where the sound should start, add an empty gameobject and call it "Survivor". Then add the script from above and drag'n'drop all needed "RadioPlayers" (or any object that should survive the scene switch) and you're good to go.
You can add the desired objects also via scripting by adding them to the Survivors-list.

About the DJ: it will be available at the end of the month. We're currently in an extensive testphase and will submit it by the end of the next week. After that, it's in the hands of the UAS-team.
It will work (like Radio) on any platform, including OSX.

Please let me know if this was helpful.


So long,
Stefan


Edit:
"SurviveSceneSwitch" is now part of Radio

 

Thanks, Stefan, much appreciated!

did a quick and dirty test, and it works. I'll need to refine things.

Are there any Rights Usages/Copyright details we should know, if we use the radio stations that have been preset with the demo?

I see SomaFM and 1.fm.

thanks,

 

Hi shwa!

You're welcome.
About your legal question: We did look up various legal issues, however, we only found specific information about Switzerland:

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.

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

Canada:
http://www.cmrra.ca

On a more general note:
We included the various stations in the demo scene mainly to show that it works technically and also for fun (we like music and it was interesting to find all these different radio stations).
If you plan on including stations in a game that you release on a commercial basis, we strongly recommend that you contact the stations you want to use yourself.


Cheers,
Stefan

 

Thanks for this information, Stefan.
Much appreciated!

 

You're welcome
If you have any suggestions or questions, don't hesitate to contact me.


So long,
Stefan

 

We currently working on the 2.4.0 update of Radio.
We're happy to announce official demos and packages for the following assets in our upcoming release:

Audio Visualizer:


Visualizer Studio:



and PlayMaker (without picture).


Here is the download for the actual demo application:

Windows
Mac
Linux


So long,
Stefan

 

Hi there! great asset. Is there a way to just play/stream a single MP3 from the web?

 

Hi musikito

"Radio" isn't designed for this purpose, but it's possible.
We will release our new asset "DJ" in a few days - it's much better for local an remote files...

Anyway, here is a working setup for "Radio":



It's important to set the "Cache Stream Size" higher than the file size!


Cheers
Stefan

 

That this the trick of what I was looking for.

Waiting for the DJ asset

 

Hi musikito

I'm glad it worked!
We made large general improvements in Radio over the last weeks, so DJ is a bit delayed.
But we will release it soon, I promise (and will post it here when it's ready)!

 

We've just submitted version 2.4.0 to the store. Here is the change-log:

• PLS and M3U-parser added!
• over 30 new stations: adding up to a grand total of 134!
• Custom editors incl. Test-Drive implemented
• Configuration window and "UnityPreferences" added
• Update-checker added
• All callbacks renamed to OnXY
• Demo for "Audio Visualizer" added (see folder '3rdparty')
• Demo for "CompleteSoundSuite" added (see folder '3rdparty')
• Demo for "VisualizerStudio" added (see folder '3rdparty')
• PlayMaker actions improved
• Code improvements
• Documentation improved
• Minimal Unity version is now 5.1.1

Here are some impressions of the new Editor-integration:













So long,
Stefan

 

Bought PRO version on sale Looks nice, just one note - somewhere should be written that some of Standard Assets are needed.

 

Hi Smokas

Thank you for buying "Radio PRO" and your feedback!

We already removed the "Standard Assets"-part in the upcoming version. It's only used for the 3D-audio demo scene and should be added manually if the scene is needed...


So long,
Stefan

 

Got error:

Assets/crosstales/Radio/3rd party/PlayMaker/Scripts/RadioManagerPlayRandom.cs(34,26): error CS1061: Type `Crosstales.Radio.RadioManager' does not contain a definition for `PlayRandom' and no extension method `PlayRandom' of type `Crosstales.Radio.RadioManager' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

 

Hi Smokas

Which version of "Radio" are you using? It seems not to be the latest version 2.4.0 from the store - please update it and try it again

If you still have errors, please write me an email.


So long,
Stefan

 

It is the latest - 2.4.0.

I fixed it in my way - changed RadioManager.PlayRandom() to RadioManager.Next(true);

 

Hmm, I still think there are old files laying around in your project

We made many changes in the last few versions, so if you like to try, please follow this steps in your project:

1. Inside Unity, go to menu "File" => "New Scene"
2. Delete the "crosstales\Radio" folder from the Project-view
3. Import the latest version from the "Asset Store"

We already improved the actions for the upcoming release.

Cheers
Stefan

 

Created new project with Radio Pro and Playmaker only - same error. Seems that action RadioManagerPlayRandom was not updated, when you submitted package.

 

OK - I got. There are TWO Playmaker packages - one in 3rd party folder, second - in PlayMaker folder. I imported the second one.

 

Yes, you're right. In the current PRO-version 2.4.0 is a folder named "PlayMaker" inside the "3rd party"-folder with an out-dated-version...
I apologize for the hassle it caused!

I hope now everything is fine.

 

We're nearly ready to release the next version 2.4.1 of radio. Here are some changes:

• Provider for user added. It's now easy possible for your users to manage their own stations!
• Save for user files implemented
• Locate and edit user files with the default application
• Provider for Shoutcast radio stations!
• Editor and code improvements
• Performance improvements under Windows and NAudio

Here are some impressions from the latest demo:





Cheerio
Stefan

 

Bought the PRO version today. It was very easy to integrate into my game. Thanks!

 

Hi radimoto

Thank you for buying "Radio PRO" and I'm glad it's working for you!

If you're happy with the product, please don't forget to rate us in the store.
Or even better: write a little review. It's very much appreciated!


So long,
Stefan