Bauer media radio stations will no longer be available on third party sites - including Roon

Bauer media have released the following:

Stations affected include

  • Absolute radio.
  • Greatest Hits.
  • Jazz FM.
  • Kerrang!
  • KISS.
  • Magic.
  • Planet Rock.
  • Scala Radio.

A full list of Bauer stations can be found here

It appears that all of these will no longer be available to third parties, including Roon, Tunein and Sonos.

Planet Rock has issued some FAQs

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Sounds like the switch over will be with us soon.

Wondering what work arounds people plan to use?

Unless Roon can provide a facility to log into the Bauer Radio Limited stations then I’m going to have to go back to using my old Meridian based multi-room system. That means using my G91A as the ‘core’ of my system and distributing S/PDIF music round the house via co-ax cables. Internet radio then comes from my Apple mac mini attached to the G91A
You have to be in the room with the ‘core’ to change stations or select music. Which is a pain and one of the reasons that I switched to Roon.

Worryingly there has only been one reply to this thread. Which implies not many people are worried by the change?

Welcome to the walled garden. It seems Bauer want the “deep” knowledge of what you’re listening to and when to no doubt market you to death a la Facebook and other enclosed environments. It’s a shame as I listen to a local Edinburgh station owned by Bauer Media when I’m getting ready in the morning for local news, weather and most importantly traffic reports. I used a Sonos Roam in the bathroom which Roon happily connected to through Sonos streaming. For now I’m running the RadioPlayer app on my iPhone and going via Bluetooth which works for my use case but if I wanted a Higher Fidelity experience in another room then it doesn’t really work.

I fear much like the removal of headphone sockets on smartphones Bauer will lead and others will follow. I got redirected to the BBC Sounds app the other day when trying to listen to a “raw” BBC Radio stream.

What might be the answer is an app that you can plug services into (much like the native Sonos app) and they play to a virtual speaker that is a streaming endpoint of http://something_local that Roon can then “listen” to. Conceptually similar to Print to PDF, it’s not really a printer - it’s a local file.

Bit of a pain as I liked having internet radio anywhere I had Roon.

Native Sonos does have a Planet Radio service and Alexa can use it as well so you can say “Alexa, play Forth One in the kitchen” but of course only useful for Sonos endpoints.

I’m sure that if Sonos, Alexa etc have found solutions then Roon can as well. And as you say, where one company goes their competitors are sure to follow. So soon you will only be able to access the more popular streaming services via an app.

So come on Roon, step up and give us an interface!

Before Roon, I signed up to Planet Rock to listen via a web browser as you receiver fewer ads. But it is really spooky when the radio suddenly says something like “Hi Adrian, Wickes in Banbury are offering 10% off stuff today”. I prefer to use the Roon interface; you get a few more ads but the system isn’t trying to talk to you personally!

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Don’t know if there has been a change of strategy, but I am still able to access the stations via Roon.

Well they have done it. I can no longer access any of the Bauer Media stations. I now get a message “Playback was interrupted because a track failed to load.”
So that means I can no longer listen to Planet Rock, Scala Radio, Kerrang! Radio or any of the Absolute Radio stations through ROON.

I need a solution to this problem because I’ve now lost ROON’s multi-room capabiIity for my favourite radio stations.

I understand that ROON may be a bit reluctant to start storing personal info to allow an automatic log in to the web site interface Bauer Media now want you to use. But it must be fairly easy to intercept the audio output from the web browser (Safari in my case) and route it into ROON?
Or could ROON be made to look like an output device?

Oh dear.

That’s a lot of stations to remove


There are long standing feature requests for something like this, for example

Another route for technically minded people may be to catch the URL and add it to your my live radio. The URL should have your personal token/details and so would not be circumventing Bauer’s wish for your info.


 and unfortunately it doesn’t work after a few hours, as tokens are time limited.
So no solution at this stage for the integration of Bauer stations in Roon


I’ve scanned through the database and have hidden all the Bauer stations that are no longer available. Some still are, albeit with the warning message. I’ll leave those until they, too, disappear.

I may have missed some, please let me know if you find any that shoud no longer be there.

Perhaps one day Roon will find a way


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Let’s hope, but I am pessimistic. Live Radio seems to have low priority and limited resources for its maintenance and development. Some basic features have not been sorted out more than 2 years after the launch (such as being able to stream all existing radio streaming formats) so a heavy modification of the GUI for the management of radio subscriptions sounds unlikely.

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I had a go with the URL as well. Just got “ROON could not find a radio station at this URL”

Oh well, just going to have to re-instate my Meridian multi-room system; rubbish as it is its better than nothing :frowning:

That wouldn’t work anyway. You need the audio stream URL which contains some of your info plus a token - which appears time limited.

OK, so I’ve clearly got no idea what
" Another route for technically minded people may be to catch the URL and add it to your my live radio . The URL should have your personal token/details and so would not be circumventing Bauer’s wish for your info."
actually means.
Which also means that most other people who have paid up for ROON also have no idea either.

Personally, I signed up with a life membership because I thought the multi-room capability and ability to manage CD library and streaming services was brilliant.

So come on guys, its all very well making micro-improvements on the way the search engines work and the way the HMI is displayed, but if we are losing the ability to connect to mainstream internet radio stations then the ROON service is being significantly degraded.

Very much my position. Thought it would be simple to listen to a national radio station on Roon.

To be fair, ROON used to be able to play Planet Rock, it’s Bauer Mafia that have messed it up by restricting access by imposing log in requirements :cry:
But if Sonos can still manage to play Bauer Mafia stations, then it can’t be that hard, can it?

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Thanks to somebody on the Naim forum there is a way round this.

Go to http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/

Search for the radio station you want to add. Copy the link you want (to the right of the ‘Listen Live’ button) and then add this in to Roon.

I’ve added Jazz FM and Wave 105 successfully and they play fine with no warning before playback.

How long they will keep these active is anyone’s guess but we can live and hope!

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