I have suffered a bit of a setback, due to the fact that the streams the BBC offer are not compatible with flash. I contacted James Cridland, who is the head of future media & technology at the BBC (formerly head of digital at Virgin Radio). James writes a regular blog on the radio industry which is fascinating, I urge anyone who has even a mild interest in radio to have a read. Anyway, he kindly got back to me and explained that the BBC only provide two external links to their streams, .asx to play in windows media player, and .ram for real player. The problem with both of these is that they are a nightmare to work with in flash.
On top of this they do not provide on-demand info, such as currently playing song. The only streams they have for flash are designed to only work internally for their iPlayer. Im disappointed that i wont be able to add BBC streams to my app, as it would be perfect given the chat-orientated nature of a lot of their stations. It seems that, as identified in a previous post, Absolute Radio are the industry leaders in this regard. It would be great if there was a nationwide standard for UK radio online streaming. Surely a lot of the commercial stations could only benefit from offering better data services to their online listeners?