How to Play Internet Radio in Home Assistant

Published 28 September 2026

Home Assistant can play live radio on almost any speaker it controls — a Cast device, a Sonos, a smart TV — with no subscription and no extra app. There are two routes: the built-in Radio Browser integration, which puts a directory of thousands of stations into the media browser, and plain stream URLs, which you can use in automations and scripts. Both work with the same open directory that 72FM is built on.

Route 1: the Radio Browser integration

1. Go to Settings → Devices & services, choose Add integration and pick Radio Browser. There is nothing to configure: no account, no API key and no options.
2. Open Media in the sidebar and choose Radio Browser to browse the stations.
3. Pick the speaker you want to play on in the media browser, then choose a station.

Two details worth knowing:

• Local stations appear only once your home location is set, in Settings → System → General.
• The integration adds no entities. It is a media source, so automations reach its stations through the Play media action rather than through a sensor or a switch.

Route 2: a stream URL in an automation

For a station you want every morning, use its stream address directly with the media_player.play_media action:

action: media_player.play_media
target:
  entity_id: media_player.kitchen
data:
  media_content_id: "https://example.com/stream"
  media_content_type: music

Replace the example address with the station's real one: every station page on 72FM has a Stream address panel with a Copy button. Put the action under a time trigger and you have a radio alarm; follow it with a delay and media_player.media_stop and you have a sleep timer.

Which speakers work

Anything Home Assistant exposes as a media player that can play a URL: Cast devices such as Nest speakers and Chromecasts, Sonos, many smart TVs, and players run by Music Assistant. Speakers differ in the formats they accept, so if one station stays silent, try another stream of the same station — an https address instead of http, or MP3 instead of HLS.

Finding the stream addresses

• One station: the Stream address panel on its 72FM page, with a Copy button and a one-station .m3u download. How to find a station's stream URL covers other ways.
• Many stations: free M3U playlists by country and genre, rebuilt every week from the same directory. Home Assistant does not import M3U files itself, but they are plain text: open one and copy the addresses you want.

When a station stops

Stations move to new streaming servers from time to time, and an old address goes quiet. Pick the station again in the Radio Browser media browser, or copy the current address from its 72FM page. Internet radio stopped working goes through the other causes.