MDR SPUTNIK - Einfach die beste Musik - Deine Lieblingsmusik

This is one of the quieter entries in Germany's listing, at 1034 of 1,409. Stations at this depth are usually community, religious or single genre broadcasters rather than national networks, and the country's numbered pages are the only route to them.

At 102 kbps, this sits below most of Germany's listing, whose median is 128 kbps. 62% of the country's stations reach 128 kbps or better, so the dial around it is mostly higher.

MDR SPUTNIK - Einfach die beste Musik - Deine Lieblingsmusik streams in AAC while most of Germany's dial is MP3. Codec choice is mostly invisible to a listener, and it is one of the clearest fingerprints of which hosting provider a station uses, since providers default their customers into a format and few customers ever change it.

The stream is served as an HLS playlist, which is the format broadcasters use to switch bitrates on the fly and the one a plain browser audio element will not open. Nothing is wrong with the station; the player on this page simply cannot follow that kind of link without a library. The extension carries one and handles it.

Its audio comes from mdr-radio-hls.akamaized.net. Five other stations in Germany stream from the same host, which is a smaller sharing than the big platforms and often means the same people run them all.