Antenne Steiermark (werbefrei)

Antenne Steiermark (werbefrei) is at position 19 of the 103 stations in Austria with pages here, inside the top quarter of the national listing. That is high enough to be reached by browsing rather than by searching, which is how most of these pages are actually found.

At 1828 kbps, Antenne Steiermark (werbefrei) streams at more than double Austria's median of 128 kbps. That is a deliberate choice by whoever runs it: bandwidth is the recurring cost of an internet station, and a rate this far above the local norm is money spent on sounding better than the dial around it.

The format here is AAC, against a listing for Austria overwhelmingly made of MP3. Both play in a browser; the difference shows up in how much quality survives at a given bitrate, where AAC has the advantage at lower rates.

This one is HLS, a segmented format rather than a single continuous stream. It is worth knowing because the failure is specific and fixable rather than a dead station: the address works, the browser just cannot open that shape of address unaided.

Its audio comes straight from 60efd7a2b4d02.streamlock.net, an address unique to this entry in Austria's listing. That is the simplest case there is, and it is the one where pressing play tells you the whole truth about whether the station is on air.