How to Listen to New Zealand Radio Online

Published 18 September 2026

You can stream New Zealand radio live in any browser, with no download and no account: open 72FM's New Zealand page, choose a station and press play. For a country of five million people, the dial is surprisingly varied — an advert-free public broadcaster, two big commercial networks, a network of Māori iwi stations, Pacific community radio and some of the best student radio anywhere.

RNZ: public radio without adverts

Public radio in New Zealand goes back to 1925, and today's RNZ is non-commercial and publicly funded, so its stations carry no adverts at all.

• RNZ National — news, current affairs, interviews and features, with programming in English and te reo Māori. It is the most-voted New Zealand station in the directory, and the place to start.
• RNZ Concert — classical music, jazz and specialist programmes. In 2020 RNZ planned to take it off FM and automate it; the plan was dropped after a public outcry, which says something about how much its listeners care.
• RNZ Pacific — news and programmes for the Pacific Islands, in English and Pacific languages.

The commercial networks

Most of the commercial dial belongs to two companies, and between them they cover almost every format.

NZME runs Newstalk ZB — the country's big talkback station, with separate streams for Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch — plus ZM for current hits, The Hits, Coast for easy favourites, and Radio Hauraki, which began in 1966 as a pirate station broadcasting from a boat off Auckland. The history of pirate radio tells the wider story. NZME's own app is iHeartRadio.

MediaWorks runs The Rock (loud and cheerful), The Edge (pop), The Breeze (easy listening), More FM, The Sound (classic rock), Channel X (alternative from the 1990s on), George FM (dance music) and Mai FM (hip-hop and R&B). Its app is rova. The station long known as Magic became Breeze Classic in November 2025, so an old "Magic" listing may point at the new name.

Māori radio

Twenty-one iwi (tribal) stations, funded by the Māori broadcasting agency Te Māngai Pāho, broadcast across the country, and almost every Māori community is within reach of one. They mix te reo Māori programming, local news and music, and for anyone learning the language they are one of the best ways to hear it spoken every day. Tahu FM, from Ngāi Tahu in the South Island, is one of those that streams through the directory, with hip-hop, R&B and hits.

Pacific and community radio

Auckland is one of the largest Polynesian cities in the world, and its radio shows it. Niu FM and 531pi broadcast for Pacific communities, with music, news and programmes in Samoan, Tongan and other Pacific languages. The city's other communities have their own stations too — Radio Chinese FM90.6 in Chinese, and Radio Spice for the Indian community.

Student radio

New Zealand's student stations have a reputation well beyond their campuses. 95bFM, from the University of Auckland, has been a starting point for New Zealand bands and DJs for decades — and it streams in lossless FLAC as well as at 256kbps, which is rare for any station anywhere. RDU in Christchurch is another long-running student station in the directory.

Local and regional radio

Beyond the networks there are small local stations with a lot of character — Brian FM in Nelson, BeachFM on the Kāpiti Coast, Ski FM for the central North Island ski fields, and a country station in Invercargill that plays Kiwi country. They are what radio sounds like in a small town, and there is no better way to hear the accent.

The sounds that come from here

New Zealand music. Every May is New Zealand Music Month, when stations lean harder than usual on local artists. Year round, the student stations are where you hear new New Zealand music first.

Talkback. Newstalk ZB and RNZ National between them are how a lot of the country follows the news — and calling in to talk about it is a national habit.

Sport. Rugby commentary is part of the national soundtrack, and Sport Nation in the directory streams sport talk. Whether a particular match streams outside the country depends on the broadcaster's rights.

Listening from abroad

Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders live in Australia, with many more in London and elsewhere, and online radio is how many of them keep up with home. Most New Zealand streams in the directory play internationally in the ordinary way; if one does not, radio stations not available in your country explains why. Expat radio covers the habit more broadly.

Mind the time difference. New Zealand is one of the first places to start each day — 12 hours ahead of UTC in winter and 13 in summer. The breakfast show in Auckland goes out on the previous evening in London and the previous afternoon in New York, so evening in Europe is the time to hear New Zealand wake up.

Sound quality

The NZME streams are mostly 64kbps AAC+, which sounds better than the number suggests; the MediaWorks stations stream at around 130kbps AAC. RNZ National and RNZ Concert both have 128kbps AAC streams alongside lower-bitrate MP3 ones — pick the AAC stream for music. And 95bFM's FLAC stream is as good as internet radio gets, though it uses far more data. Radio audio quality and bitrate explains the numbers.

A route in

1. RNZ National, for the news and conversations the country listens to.
2. 95bFM, for New Zealand music you will not hear anywhere else.
3. Newstalk ZB or The Rock, for commercial radio as most New Zealanders hear it.
4. Tahu FM or Niu FM, for Māori and Pacific New Zealand.
5. RNZ Concert, for the station its listeners saved.

All of them are on the New Zealand page, free, an hour a day without an account. Across the Tasman, Australian radio online is the natural next step.

Listen now: All stations from New Zealand