I recently switched to Windows Media Player ver. 12 and was immediately frustrated by the lack of access to Internet radio stations. I circumvented this deficiency by creating WMP playlists manually. You can too.
Note that I am not too familiar with WMP, so this may only work in version 12 included with Windows 7. If you have an earlier version, please let me know if the playlist file format is different. I’ll proceed by talking you through the creation of a playlist for Swiss Radio Jazz.
Begin by finding your WMP Playlists directory. With my configuration, I found this named “M:\music\playlists” but you’ll find it somewhere within your music folders on your system.
With Notepad++ or other text edit, create and edit a file called “swissradiojazz.wpl“. Paste into your new playlist the following text:
<?wpl version="1.0"?>
<smil>
<head>
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Windows Media Player -- 12.0.7600.16415"/>
<meta name="ItemCount" content="1"/>
<title>Swiss Radio Jazz</title>
</head>
<body>
<seq>
<media src="http://www.radioswissjazz.ch/live/mp3.asx"/>
</seq>
</body>
</smil>
When you start up WMP, you’ll see a playlist called “Swiss Radio Jazz” which you can Play.
You can create as many of these playlists as you like but you’ll have to invent unique names and accurate media sources for each one.
So how, you might wonder, do you figure out the media source for a stream? I’ll do two examples: WBUR and Bossa Nova Jazz.
WBUR
This public radio outlet in Boston has a “Listen Live” button on their web site. When you click “Listen Live”, you’ll see a header displaying “Other available codecs”. One of these codecs is Windows Media. If you right-mouse on the Windows Media icon in Firefox (similar but different in your browser!), you can choose Copy Link Location to capture the media source:
http://www.wbur.org/wp-content/themes/wbur/live_stream/windowsmedia.asx
You must insert this URL into your WBUR playlist. Remember to name your WPL file something like WBUR.wpl and give an unique title such as “WBUR”.
Bossa Nova Jazz
There are quite a few ways to track down media sources for your WMP playlists. I often use WinAmp which contains all the ShoutcastRadio sources you could hope to image. To do this, download and start up WinAmp – a free media player. Figure out how to display Shoutcast Radio, then choose a station, such as Bossa Nova Jazz and click “Tune In!”
After you have tuned in and are listening the the stream, choose File -> View file info… from Winamp’s menu. You will see a dialog box with all the information you need. Most importantly, you’ll see a URL at the top of the dialog box which identifies the media source as: http://94.232.114.240:6806
