+++
date = 2022-07-25
title = "CurseRadio: Listening to the Radio on the Comand Line"
description = "Use Curse Radio to listen to radio on the command-line."
+++

## Overview

While exploring some interesting Linux applications, I stumbled across
[curseradio](https://github.com/chronitis/curseradio), a command-line
radio player based on Python.

This application is fantastic and incredibly easy to install, so I
wanted to dedicate a post today to this app. Let's look at the features
within the app and then walk through the installation process I took to
get `curseradio` working.

## Features

![curseradio](https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20220725-curseradio/curseradio.png)

The radio player itself is quite minimal. As you can see in the
screenshot above, it contains a simple plaintext list of all available
categories, which can be broken down further and further. In addition,
radio shows are available for listening, alongside regular radio
stations.

For example, the `Sports` > `Pro Basketball` >
`Shows` category contains a number of specific shows related
to Professional Basketball.

Aside from being able to play any of the listed stations/shows, you can
make a channel your favorite by pressing `f`. It will now
show up at the top of the radio player in the `Favourites`
category.

### Commands/Shortcuts

  Key(s)       Command
  ------------ ---------------------------------
  ↑, ↓         navigate
  PgUp, PgDn   navigate quickly
  Home, End    to top/bottom
  Enter        open/close folders, play stream
  k            stop playing stream
  q            quit
  f            toggle favourite

## Installation

### Dependencies

Before installing `curseradio`, a handful of system and
Python packages are required. To get started, install
`python3`, `pip3`, and `mpv` on your
system. In this example, I'm using Fedora Linux, which uses the
`dnf` package manager. You may need to adjust this if you're
using a different system.

```sh
sudo dnf install python3 pip3 mpv
```

Next, use `pip3` to install `requests`,
`xdg`, and `lxml`:

```sh
pip3 install requests xdg lxml
```

### Repository Source Installation

Once all the dependencies are installed, we can clone the source code
and enter that directory:

```sh
git clone https://github.com/chronitis/curseradio && cd curseradio
```

Once you're within the `curseradio` directory, you can
install the application with the provided `setup.py` script.

```sh
sudo python3 setup.py install
```

In my case, I ran into a few errors and needed to create the folders
that curseradio wanted to use for its installation. If you don't get
any errors, you can skip this and run the app.

```sh
sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/python3.10/
sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/
```

```sh
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /usr/local/lib/python3.10/
```

## Run the Application

Once fully installed without errors, you can run the application!

```sh
python3 /usr/local/bin/curseradio
```