The Hits

The Hits is the only station in New Zealand whose first tag is contemporary hits, out of 67 with pages here. Tags come from the broadcasters themselves, so this says the station describes itself in a way no other entry in New Zealand does, which is a narrower and more honest claim than saying it is the country's only contemporary hits station.

At 64 kbps this is one of the lowest rate streams on New Zealand's dial, whose median is 128 kbps. It will hold a connection almost anywhere, which is the tradeoff being made.

The Hits publishes an HLS stream. That is a modern and perfectly good way to broadcast, and it is also why the button on this page may not start it: HLS needs a player that can read a playlist and fetch segments, which a browser audio tag does not do on its own.

The audio comes from playerservices.streamtheworld.com, and 10 other stations in New Zealand are served from the same address. That is a streaming platform carrying many broadcasters rather than a station running its own server, which is worth knowing for a practical reason: when a platform has a bad night, a whole block of New Zealand's listing stops answering at once and nothing is wrong with any of the stations in it.