Trackhop
Songs from a radio, in a playlist
A radio sync listens to an internet radio in the hours you choose and saves the songs it plays to a playlist on any service Trackhop connects to: the morning show’s music in your Spotify, a station’s evening mix on YouTube Music, a whole weekend of KEXP in Navidrome.
How it works
Most internet radios, and the streams of FM stations, send the title of the song on air with the audio (Icecast and Shoutcast “ICY” metadata). Trackhop reads only that title; the audio is never kept. Each new song is noted once in a File playlist of its own, Radio - <station> (the station’s own announcements, adverts and news left out), and the sync takes the songs from there to your playlist, matched like any sync: every 10 minutes while new songs arrive, and once more when the window closes.
Step by step
- Syncs → New sync, and pick Radio as the source.
- Find the station by name (from radio-browser.info, a free directory of some 50,000 radios), or paste its stream’s address and give it a name.
- Pick the target: the service, and a new playlist (<station> radio) or one of yours.
- Pick the days and the hours. The same time twice listens all day; an end before the start runs past midnight (Friday 22:00–02:00 listens into Saturday night).
- Save. The card wears a radio and shows the days and hours; while it listens, it says what is on air.
On the phone
The phone does not keep the radio playing for hours: every 2 minutes in the window it opens the stream, reads up to the first title (a few seconds, a few tens of KB) and closes it. Songs last three minutes and more, so this catches nearly all of them for a few megabytes an hour instead of about 60 for the whole stream.
- Wi‑Fi only is on for a new radio sync: on mobile data the card says Waiting for Wi‑Fi. Turn it off in the sync’s options to listen on mobile data too.
- While a window is open, a quiet notification says Listening to <station> and the last song.
- To start on time with the screen off, Android needs Trackhop allowed to set alarms and reminders (Android 14 and later ask you; the editor shows the way). Without it, Trackhop starts listening when you open it, or from a Tap to listen notification.
- Android 15 allows this kind of background work 6 hours a day: past that, listening stops, the songs heard so far are synced and the card says so, with Listen again. Otherwise it starts again at the next window.
On Desktop and Docker
The web page has New radio sync on the home page, with the same steps; the server listens continuously in the window (Docker guide).
Tips
- This stream sends no song titles: try another of the station’s streams (an MP3 or AAC one rather than HLS), or another station.
- Songs Trackhop could not find with certainty on the target go to the review, as in any sync.
- The songs heard so far are in Files, in the Radio - <station> playlist.