One in four radio streams has no track title

Why this matters

The Audio Trends 2026 of the German state media authorities (Medienanstalten) count more than 17 million people who use web radio within four weeks. Almost 6 million listen daily. In the car and on the lock screen they see only what the stream and the player provide: station name, logo and the current track.

In the press release, the chair of the directors' conference of the state media authorities, Dr. Thorsten Schmiege, calls questions of findability on digital platforms “ever more important” (author's translation). Track title and logo are something different from placement on a platform. But they help decide whether a listener recognises a station on the display.

What I tested

The starting point was 457 live streams from the open station database Radio-Browser. I merged quality variants and regional windows into one station and removed entries outside Germany. That left 450 streams from 190 stations. The selection includes public and private stations as well as community radio (Bürgerradios) and small web radios. The focus is on Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony and Berlin/Brandenburg.

Every stream was requested with the header Icy-MetaData: 1. I read up to three metadata blocks. A stream counts as without track titles if it contains only the station name or nothing at all. A station counts as without track titles if none of its streams delivers titles.

The results

13947

all streams deliver titles (139)mixed (4)no stream delivers titles (47)

Finding	Value
Stations without track titles	47 of 190 (25 %)
of these at the same streaming provider	27
Stations with track titles at all other providers	139 of 163 (85 %)
Streams reachable via HTTPS	60 %
Streams with CORS header	96 %

I do not name the provider here. The measurement alone does not show why no titles arrive there. It may be down to the default setting or to the configuration of the individual stations.

Cross-check: a look at the Netherlands

To see whether the pattern is tied to Germany, I repeated the same test with a Dutch station list. It contained 1,253 entries with a stream address. 471 of them were not reachable or delivered no stream on 24 October 2026, for example because of a timeout, an address that no longer exists or an error page. I tested and counted 782 streams from 580 brands. A brand is the name without any addition in brackets. Channels such as those of a station with several programmes run under one brand.

Finding	Germany	Netherlands
Brands tested	190	580
Titles on all streams	73 %	68 %
Titles on only some of the streams	2 %	2 %
No title on any stream	25 %	29 %
Streams reachable via HTTPS	60 %	85 %

The list also contains stations whose country of origin I could not check. I therefore speak of brands from a Dutch station list.

Three things stand out:

• The same pattern at the provider. 47 of the 170 brands without titles report the same server identifier. Not one of these 47 stations delivers a title. The same identifier also appears at the 27 German stations from the first measurement. Two other identifiers with 43 brands in total, by contrast, deliver titles on all streams.
• Local stations are affected most. Of 183 regional and local brands, 77 have titles on all streams. For 105 (57 %), no stream delivers one. Among the 40 national brands it is 3 (8 %), in the category “Other” with 357 brands it is 62 (17 %).
• Fewer HTTPS problems. 85 % of the Dutch streams are reachable via HTTPS, compared with 60 % of the German ones.

The result suggests that missing titles are more likely down to the provider's technology than to the country. I cannot prove that. Both measurements are samples, and only the station with its provider knows the cause in an individual case.

What this means in practice

• No track titles: On the lock screen and in the car only the station name appears. Listeners do not see what is playing.
• No HTTPS: A web page served over HTTPS blocks streams over HTTP. A player on the station's website then cannot play them.
• No CORS header: Browsers do not allow players to access the audio signal. Features such as level meters or an equaliser then do not work.

Possible causes

The measurement shows that titles are missing. It does not show why. From practice, several explanations come into question:

• Metadata is not switched on at the encoder or streaming server.
• The playout automation does not pass the current track on to the stream.
• The stream is a variant without metadata, for example for ad insertion.
• The provider applies a default setting that suppresses titles.

Which one applies can only be clarified by the respective station with its provider.

Checklist: test it yourself in five minutes

1. Titles: Open your stream in VLC and choose Tools → Media Information → Metadata. Does it show the track that is playing, or only your station name?
   Or on the command line:

   curl -s -H "Icy-MetaData: 1" -D - -o /dev/null --max-time 5 STREAM-ADDRESS

   If icy-metaint appears in the response lines, the server sends metadata.
2. HTTPS: Does the stream address start with https://? If not, ask your provider for an HTTPS address.
3. CORS: Does curl -sI STREAM-ADDRESS show the line access-control-allow-origin? That is the prerequisite for visualisations in the browser.
4. Format: MP3 or AAC play practically everywhere. Not every player can play pure HLS streams (.m3u8).
5. Logo: Is your logo square and at least 512 × 512 pixels? Check it on a light and on a dark background. White text on a transparent background disappears on light surfaces.

Limits of the measurement

• Both measurements are snapshots from 24 October 2026. During jingles and ad breaks the title field can be briefly empty.
• The selection is not representative. The German streams come from a database in which users maintain the entries. In the Dutch list, more than a third of the entries were no longer reachable. The figures apply only to streams that were running.
• I checked whether a title arrives, but not whether it is correct.
• I did not take logos into account for this evaluation.

Free stream check for your station

I am happy to test your stream and send you a short evaluation with concrete advice. It is free and does not oblige you to anything. Send me the stream address: kontakt@ondial.de

Who is writing this

I am Felix Wallerius and I develop Ondial, a web player for radio stations. I have a stake in the subject. I have therefore taken care to state only figures that can be checked. Try Ondial

Source

Medienanstalten: press release “Audio Trends 2026: Digitale Radionutzung steigt weiter” (October 2026, in German), published among others by the Medienanstalt Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.