RADAI

Radai is an attempt to create a radio experience using podcasts and Spotify. If you like listening to podcasts, love listening to music and want to do both at the same time, I've made this for you.
It's a private, always-on internet radio station that combines prepared YouTube podcasts with Spotify music breaks. It runs on your server, streams through the web interface, and keeps running even after the browser is closed. Any suggestions and contributions are welcome. Email me at me@mathiasmagambo.com if you want me to help you set this up for you (at a fee).

HOW IT WORKS

The podcast is pulled from Youtube with a transcript. The transcript is run through an AI model of your choice (currently DeepSeek, will configure other models later) to generate cut timetamps where ads are or based on topics. Music gets played in between the podcast ad breaks using Spotify. The Radai engine controls Spotify installed on your server through the GUI. spotifyd is used as an audio capture device. Like having Bluetooth headphones for your server to be able to listen to audio.

  YouTube channel/video
    → yt-dlp downloads audio and subtitles
    → AI model identifies ads and music-break positions
    → FFmpeg removes ads and prepares normalized podcast audio
    → Radai Engine plays podcast segments
                                    │
   Spotify Desktop → spotifyd PCM ──┤
                                    ▼
                           FFmpeg MP3 encoder
                                    ▼
                             Icecast source
                                    ▼
                      Radai buffered web stream
                                    ▼
                        Nginx + browser/VLC

FEATURES

This is only for the main features and updates. Everything else is in FEATURES.md.

• Add links to YouTube channels as podcast sources. New episodes are pulled periodically.
• Add a single video link and listen to it immediately.
• Set how many new podcasts per channel you want stored on the server and how many played podcasts you want saved.
• Add extra music breaks as you listen to a podcast. Click the ADD MUSIC BREAK button and scrub along the timeline to where you want a break.
• You can search for a song in the Spotify search and use the song's Song Radio as a music source.
• Use your saved playlists as the saved music sources by default.
• See history of played podcasts.
• See where the music breaks are and how many they are.

Audio and web stack

• Python 3 backend
• Python standard-library ThreadingHTTPServer
• Vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript frontend; no frontend build step
• FFmpeg/ffprobe for decoding, editing and MP3 encoding
• Icecast as the local MP3 source server
• Optional Node.js runtime for newer YouTube JavaScript challenges

Runtime state, downloaded media, transcripts, prepared audio and authentication caches live under data/ and are excluded from Git.

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INSTALLATION

The following example assumes Ubuntu and installs the project at /opt/radai.

1. Install system packages

  sudo apt update
  sudo apt install \
    git \
    python3 \
    python3-venv \
    ffmpeg \
    icecast2 \
    nginx

Optional HTTPS support:

  sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Install Spotify Desktop. For example, using the official Snap:

  sudo snap install spotify

Install spotifyd (https://docs.spotifyd.rs/installation/index.html) using your distribution package or one of its release binaries (https://github.com/Spotifyd/spotifyd/releases). Confirm it is available:

  spotifyd --version

A Spotify Premium account is normally required for Spotify Connect playback through spotifyd.

2. Clone and install Radai Engine

  sudo git clone https://github.com/MathiasMagambo/radai /opt/radai
  sudo chown -R "$USER:$USER" /opt/radai

  cd /opt/radai
  python3 -m venv .venv
  .venv/bin/pip install --upgrade pip
  .venv/bin/pip install -e .
  .venv/bin/pip install yt-dlp

For development:

  .venv/bin/pip install -e '.[dev]'
  .venv/bin/pytest

3. Configure the environment

  cd /opt/radai
  cp .env.example .env
  chmod 600 .env

At minimum, configure:

  RADAI_ROOT=/opt/radai
  RADIO_HOST=127.0.0.1
  RADIO_PORT=8090

  RADIO_USERNAME=radio
  RADIO_PASSWORD=replace-with-a-long-random-password

  DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=your-deepseek-api-key
  DEEPSEEK_MODEL=deepseek-chat

  ICECAST_SOURCE_PASSWORD=replace-with-another-random-password
  ICECAST_PORT=8001

  SPOTIFY_DEVICE_NAME=Radai Radio
  SPOTIFY_CDP_URL=http://127.0.0.1:9223
  SPOTIFYD_PATH=/home/your-user/.local/bin/spotifyd

The legacy Spotify Web API fields are not required for the current Spotify Desktop/Song Radio workflow.

4. Configure Icecast

Edit:

  /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml

Set its source password to exactly the same value as:

  ICECAST_SOURCE_PASSWORD=

Configure Icecast to listen locally on port 8001. Restart it:

  sudo systemctl restart icecast2
  sudo systemctl status icecast2

Radai publishes its source at:

  http://127.0.0.1:8001/spotify.mp3

Icecast does not need to be exposed publicly.

5. Authenticate Spotify

Run Spotify Desktop as the same Linux user that will run Radai. Sign into your Spotify account once. If you're running a headless server you can open Spotify with a GUI using Xvfb and log in using your qr code.

Authenticate spotifyd as that same user:

  spotifyd authenticate

Follow the browser authorization link. spotifyd stores its OAuth credentials in its user cache. See the spotifyd authentication documentation (https://docs.spotifyd.rs/configuration/auth.html).

6. Start Spotify Desktop with remote debugging

Copy the supplied service:

  mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
  cp deploy/radai-spotify-desktop.service ~/.config/systemd/user/

Edit the copied unit if necessary:

• Change /usr/bin/spotify to /snap/bin/spotify for Snap.
• Set the correct DISPLAY.
• Keep remote debugging on port 9223.

Then enable it:

  systemctl --user daemon-reload
  systemctl --user enable --now radai-spotify-desktop.service

Check it:

  systemctl --user status radai-spotify-desktop.service
  curl http://127.0.0.1:9223/json

A headless server needs a persistent graphical session, such as Xvfb, with the service’s DISPLAY pointed at that session.

7. Install the Radai web service

  cp deploy/radai-web.service ~/.config/systemd/user/

Adjust /opt/radai in the unit if the repository is installed elsewhere.

Enable it:

  systemctl --user daemon-reload
  systemctl --user enable --now radai-web.service

For startup without an interactive SSH login:

  sudo loginctl enable-linger "$USER"

Verify:

  systemctl --user status radai-web.service
  curl -u 'radio:your-password' http://127.0.0.1:8090/api/status

8. Configure Nginx and HTTPS

Copy the supplied Nginx template:

  sudo cp deploy/nginx.conf.example /etc/nginx/sites-available/radai
  sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/radai /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/radai

Edit server_name and replace radio.example.com with your domain.

Validate and reload:

  sudo nginx -t
  sudo systemctl reload nginx

For HTTPS:

  sudo certbot --nginx -d radio.example.com

Nginx proxies the control site to port 8090 and serves the authenticated, unbuffered MP3 endpoint at:

  https://radio.example.com/stream.mp3

9. Start using it

10. Open the configured site.

11. Sign in with RADIO_USERNAME and RADIO_PASSWORD.

12. Add one or more YouTube podcast sources.

13. Wait for an episode to download and prepare.

14. Select a Spotify playlist or Song Radio seed.

15. Configure the number of songs per music break.

16. Press START RADIO.

17. Listen in the browser or open /stream.mp3 in VLC.

For restricted YouTube content, place a Netscape-format cookie file at:

  data/state/youtube-cookies.txt

Keep cookies, Spotify OAuth credentials, generated media and .env private; none should be committed to Git.