Streaming

cliamp plays audio from URLs, M3U/PLS playlists, and podcast RSS feeds.

HTTP Streams

Play audio directly from a URL:

cliamp https://example.com/song.mp3
cliamp http://radio-station.com/stream.m3u
cliamp local.mp3 https://example.com/remote.mp3   # mix local + remote

For a non-seekable HTTP stream, the UI shows ● Streaming and a static seek bar. Seek keys have no effect.

PLS Playlists

cliamp supports PLS playlist files and M3U files:

cliamp https://radio.cliamp.stream/lofi/stream.pls

HLS Streams

cliamp supports HLS master and media playlists (.m3u8). Large broadcasters, such as Brazilian RBS/Wowza stations, use these playlists:

cliamp "https://example.com/live/playlist.m3u8"

cliamp passes the URL to ffmpeg. ffmpeg resolves relative chunklist and segment URIs and follows the live segment window. This requires ffmpeg, which AAC and Opus also require.

Live HLS uses timed metadata, not inline ICY. cliamp does not update the now-playing track title for HLS streams.

Podcasts

Play a podcast by passing its RSS feed URL:

cliamp https://example.com/podcast/feed.xml

cliamp reads episode titles and the podcast name from the feed and shows them in the playlist.

Xiaoyuzhou (小宇宙)

Play an individual Xiaoyuzhou episode by passing its URL:

cliamp https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/episode/xxxx

Radio Catalog

Press R in the player to browse and search more than 30,000 online radio stations in the Radio Browser directory. Use / to search by name, Enter to play, and a to add a station to the playlist.

Track Info

For live radio, cliamp shows the current track from inline ICY metadata (StreamTitle). This works for most stations and codecs, including MP3, AAC, and Opus.

Some broadcasters do not send inline metadata. They publish now-playing data through a separate API. cliamp reads these APIs automatically:

NTS is live DJ radio with no tag for each track. cliamp shows the show or host name, not a song.

Load URL at Runtime

Press u during playback to load a stream or playlist URL without restarting. It supports the same URL types as CLI arguments: direct audio URLs, M3U/PLS playlists, RSS podcast feeds, and yt-dlp compatible links.

Run Your Own Radio Station

Run an internet radio station with cliamp-server. Point it to a directory of audio files to start broadcasting. It supports multiple stations, live metadata, and on-the-fly transcoding.

See playlists.md for M3U playlist details.