BBC Sounds

Radio, podcasts and music from the BBC Sounds website.

BBC Sounds addon

A plug-in for the Kodi media center that unlocks the wonderful world of BBC Sounds for Kodi users.

This is an unofficial plug-in, not created or endorsed by the BBC.

The plugin is currently in beta stage. The addon should now be in a decent enough state to be tested by a wider audience.

Latest version: 1.0.0-beta.1 (0.1.0)

Installation

This addon is intended to be used on Kodi 21 (Omega) or newer. Kodi 20 (Nexus) may work but is not tested nor supported. Older Kodi versions will definitely not work.

While in beta stage, the plugin can only be installed as zip file. Download the zip from the addons directory or GitHub releases and install this as zip file in Kodi. Follow How to install from zip file for more detailed info.

Installation from the official Kodi repository is plannend for the first full release.

Usage

The best way to explore is simply to browse through the add-on to see what is available. An important part of the functionality is available through an item’s context menu. Most notably, the button ‘More episodes’ that is present on many items on the website is implemented in the add-on via the context menu, but there’s much more.

Features

  • Live radio
    • National and regional stations.
    • All local stations that are available on the BBC Sounds website.
    • ‘Listen from the start’ allows the current programme to be played from the start. Available from the context menu of all live radio stations.
    • The start and end times of the programmes are displayed in the user’s time zone.
  • All podcasts on the BBC Sounds website.
  • All previous radio programmes available on the BBC Sounds website.
  • Subscribe and bookmark items.
    Almost every programme folder or episode has a context menu item to subscribe or bookmark it. Be aware that, just like the BBC website, subscription operates on programmes, while bookmarking operates on episodes.
  • Context menu item ‘More episodes’
    This allows you to browse to all episodes of the same programme. This is equivalent of clicking on the ‘More episodes’ button on the BBC Sounds website. All episodes have this context menu item, unless they are already listed as part of their programme folder.
  • Continue Listening with two-way sync.
    Continue on Kodi what you started on another device, and vice versa.
    Remove items from the list by the option ‘Remove from Listening’ in their context menu. Just like the website, this is only available on the ‘Continue Listening’ page under ‘My Sounds’, not on the ‘Home’ page.
  • Search with saved search terms.
    • Enter a new search term on the on-screen keyboard.
    • Select one of the saved search terms that you’ve used before.
    • By default, saved search terms are sorted by last used.
    • Use Kodi’s side menu to sort by name or the date the search term was created.
    • Edit or delete saved search terms by the context menu of the item, or clear the whole list.
  • Convenient account sign-in.
    Use one of two ways to sign in with your BBC account – whatever suits you best.

Kodi 22 (Piers)

‘Listen from the start’ on live radio streams is not available on Kodi 22, due to an issue with playing live DASH streams from the BBC in Kodi 22‑beta.1.

BBC Account

A BBC account is not a requirement to use the add-on. A large number of items play fine without a BBC account, but features like ‘Continue Listening’, ‘Subscribe’ and ‘Bookmark’ are, of course, only available to users who are signed in with their BBC account.

To sign in, open the addon-on’s settings, section ‘BBC Account’, and choose one of these two methods:

  1. Sign in by entering both your email and password.
    An on-screen keyboard will appear, asking you to enter your email address. If your email address is known to the BBC a second keyboard appears to enter your password.
  2. Sign in with email link.
    Just enter your email address in the on-screen keyboard. If this address is registered at the BBC, a progress dialog box will be shown informing you that you will get an email from the BBC with a link to sign in. You have 15 minutes to open the mail and click on the link.
    Once signed in, the dialog will close automatically, no later than 20 seconds after you’ve clicked on the link. Keep the dialog open until it closes automatically. If you close the progress dialog box, the login process will be cancelled.

You will be informed whether sign-in was successful or of any errors that might have occurred, like an invalid email address or password.

Issues

I’m very interested in any issues that you might find. Please open an issue on GitHub, or post a message on the support thread in the Kodi forum.

Please include an accurate description of the problem. Describe exactly what steps to make to reproduce the problem (every click from the home menu). And always attach a link to a debug log file.

Source

Source code is hosted at https://github.com/dimkroon/plugin.audio.bbcsounds

Disclaimer

This addon is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.