Frequently asked questions

The short version: press play. That’s it. That’s the whole ritual.

Right here on the site

Press Listen live at the top of the home page, or the play button in the player bar along the bottom of any page. The music keeps playing while you wander around the site, so you can browse the Song History, rate a few songs and scream in the Scream Zone without missing a riff.

If the stream hiccups, the player reconnects by itself and shows “Reconnecting…” until the music is back. It works on phones too, in any modern browser.

In your own player

Prefer a real media player, or want the music without a browser tab open? Use the playlist file:

1. Click Tune In at the top of the site (on a phone, it’s in the menu). That downloads a small file called listen.pls.
2. Open it with your player. Or skip the download and paste https://www.heavymetalradio.com/listen.pls into your player’s “Open URL” or “Open stream” option.
3. Request your favorite songs on the Requests page.
4. Sit back and let it rattle the windows.

The playlist lists a backup server too, so if one is busy, most players quietly try the other.

Players that work

• VLC (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone). Free, plays absolutely everything, and runs on just about anything with a screen. Our pick.
• Winamp (Windows). The player that started internet radio. It still runs, it still loves skins, and the llama remains thoroughly whipped.
• foobar2000 (Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone). Light, fast and endlessly tweakable, for people who alphabetise their vinyl.
• Apple Music (Mac). Already installed. Choose File › Open Stream, paste the address above, and press OK.

Any other player that handles MP3 streams or .pls playlists should work too. If yours can’t, it’s not metal enough.

The short version: heavy metal, baby! Every flavour of it, from the 1970s to last week.

What’s in the vault

More than 160,000 songs from over 7,000 artists, with new albums added all the time. Most come from the 1990s onward, but the classics are all here, because a station without Priest and Maiden is just a very loud podcast.

Who you’ll hear

• Classic heavy metal: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Saxon, Accept. Last year’s three most-played artists were Priest, Maiden and Sabbath, which surprised absolutely no one.
• Power metal: Helloween, Grave Digger, Primal Fear. Swords optional; falsetto encouraged.
• Thrash: Exodus, Overkill, Destruction.
• Death and grind: Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death. Some songs are shorter than this sentence.
• Progressive and symphonic: Dream Theater, Therion, Knight Area. Some songs are longer than your commute.

And a whole lot more. Browse the full catalog by artist on the Requests page, and see what’s been played lately in the Song History (members only).

Can’t find a band?

Send an administrator a private message. We can’t promise, but we do listen. Professionally, even.

A word to parents

Some lyrics aren’t suitable for younger listeners. Death metal in particular reads like a coroner’s report. The original FAQ encouraged the kids to listen anyway; we’ll leave that call to you, and to how thin your walls are.

The short version: the station is packed. Wait a minute or two and try again.

What it means

The stream has a limited number of listener slots, because bandwidth costs real money and this station runs on the owners’ own. “Server Full” means every slot is taken. It’s the internet-radio version of a sold-out show, minus the scalpers.

What to do

• On the site: just leave the player on. It keeps retrying by itself, shows “Reconnecting…” while it waits, and starts playing as soon as a slot opens.
• In your own player: try again in a minute or two. If you use the Tune In playlist, many players try the backup server on their own.
• If it keeps happening: tell an administrator by private message. A full house every night is a problem we’d love to have, but we’d still like to know about it.

The short version: it’s how much music is lined up before a new request gets its turn.

Where to find it

Along the bottom of the home page’s now-playing banner, next to Coming up, you’ll see something like In queue: 12m 30s for 4 songs. That’s the total length of every song lined up to play, including listener requests and dedications, which are marked in the Coming up list.

What it means for your request

• Requests join the end of the queue. If the queue says 12 minutes, your song will play in at least 12 minutes, probably a bit more.
• With no requests waiting, the queue usually runs about 8 to 15 minutes.
• A long queue means a busy night. Everyone’s requesting at once. Grab a drink; your song is coming.
• You can’t request a song that’s already queued. It’s already on its way. Requesting it twice won’t make it play twice as loud.

How requests cost and earn points is covered in The point system.

Last updated: October 15, 2026

The short version: we collect what the site needs to work, we don’t sell it, and we don’t follow you around the internet. The long version is below, for those of you who read the liner notes.

What we collect

• Your account. Username, email address, password, the date you joined, when you last logged in, and your points and rank. Your password is stored scrambled (hashed), so not even the admins can read it. For members from the old site, we also note when you first logged in on the new one.
• Roughly where you are. When you log in, your city and country are looked up from your IP address on our own server, so your address isn’t sent anywhere. We keep the city, the country and a deliberately fuzzed map position (a few miles off), not the IP address itself. It powers the Listener Map, which only members can see.
• What you post. Shouts, forum posts, song comments and ratings, lyrics you submit, song requests and dedications, and private messages, with any pictures and reactions you add.
• Your forum profile, if you fill it in. An avatar picture and a one-line signature. Pictures are redrawn on our server when you upload them, which strips the hidden photo data, such as the camera and where the photo was taken. If you had an avatar on the old site, we copied it over; change or remove it on your Profile page.
• When you were last here. The time you last had the site open, so others see a green dot next to your name while you’re around. You can switch the dot off on your Profile page. We also note how far you’ve read in each forum topic, which topics and categories you follow, and what you bookmark, so new posts can be marked for you and you can be told about replies and new topics. Only you see those. Poll votes are counted without names.
• What your browser keeps. A login cookie so you stay logged in, plus your light/dark choice, player volume, recently used emoji, and drafts of posts and reviews you haven’t sent yet, which are stored in your browser, not on our servers. No advertising cookies, no tracking pixels, and nothing from analytics companies. The only thing following you around here is the bass.
• How the site is used. We count visits ourselves, on our own server, without cookies. For each page you open we note which page it was, the site you came from (just its name), any campaign tag in the link you followed, your country, whether you’re on a phone, tablet or computer, and whether you were logged in, but not who you are. Your country is looked up on our server; your IP address isn’t kept. You’re counted with a code that changes every day, so a visit can’t be traced back to you or linked to your visits on other days. While the site’s player is playing, it tells us once a minute, so we can count listeners. If your browser sends “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control”, you aren’t counted at all. Only administrators see these figures.

Who can see what

• Everyone: your username, points and rank, your shouts in the Scream Zone, your forum posts and song comments, and the songs you’ve requested that are waiting to play. Your Year in Metal (the recap of your year each December) only if you show it on your member page or share its link; until then only you see it.
• Everyone, on your profile card: your avatar, signature, number of forum posts, when you joined, and the green dot while you’re online (unless you switch it off).
• Everyone, on Station stats: the station’s totals (listeners, the most requested songs and artists) and the usernames of the newest members. Nothing about who visited.
• Members only: Song History, and each song’s Play history and Request history (including who requested what, and their dedications), who rated a song and how, Scream History, the Top Songs and Top Users charts, lyrics, and the Listener Map with a list of who’s on it.
• Members only, if you switch it on: your city, on your profile card. It’s off unless you turn it on.
• Only you, on your Profile page: your own stats (your requests, ratings, posts and points over time).
• Private messages are between you and the people in the conversation, pictures included, but site administrators can read them if they need to, and if someone in the conversation reports a message, moderators see that message (not the rest of the conversation). Members you block can’t message you. Treat them like a backstage pass, not a confessional.
• Your email address is never shown on the site.

Who else is involved

A few outside services handle specific jobs. Each one sees only what that job needs:

• Cloudflare Turnstile checks you’re human on the sign-up, login and password-reset forms, so it sees your IP address and some browser details. Bots get turned away at the door; humans barely notice it.
• Google Maps draws the Listener Map, so Google sees your IP address when you open that page.
• YouTube, Spotify and Bandcamp players in posts and messages load only when you click one. Then that service sees your IP address and may set its own cookies, as it would on its own site. YouTube’s player is its privacy-enhanced one.
• An email delivery service sends our emails: confirmations, password resets, and the message and forum emails you get.
• Amazon. Album covers link to the Amazon store for your country (we look up your country on our own server and keep nothing). As an Amazon Associate, Heavy Metal Radio earns from qualifying purchases: if you buy something on amazon.com after clicking one, the station earns a small commission that helps keep the amps humming. Amazon knows nothing about you unless you click.
• The stream server sees your IP address while you listen (it can’t send you the music otherwise), and counts listeners. That applies to the Tune In playlist too.
• Facebook is just a link. Nothing from Facebook loads until you click it.

We don’t sell, rent or trade your personal information. Not to marketers, not to spammers, not for a signed first pressing.

Emails

We email you to confirm your address, to reset your password when you ask, when someone sends you a private message (one email per conversation, until you’ve read it on the site), and about the forum: replies to your topics and topics you watch, new topics in categories you watch, and when someone mentions or quotes you (nothing for what you’ve already seen on the site), and once each December when your Year in Metal is ready. Each of those has a stop link, and the switches are on your Profile page. If we ever send a newsletter, it will come with an unsubscribe link.

Why we’re allowed to use it

Privacy laws ask us to name the legal basis for each use of your information. Ours are:

• Running the site you signed up for (our agreement with you): your account, what you post and send, your requests and points, your profile, when you were last here, what you’ve read, follow and bookmark, and the emails about your account and the things you follow.
• Our legitimate interests, weighed against your privacy: keeping the site safe and running (the bot check, login limits, moderation and backups), counting visits without cookies, the Listener Map with its fuzzed positions and Google’s map, and showing the Amazon store for your country.
• Your consent: your city on your profile card, which stays off unless you switch it on (and you can switch it off again any time), the YouTube, Spotify and Bandcamp players, which load only when you click one, and a newsletter, if we ever send one.
• The law: keeping or handing over information when we’re legally required to, such as for a court order.

Your choices

• Update your details on your Profile page.
• For anything you can’t change there, such as your email address or deleting your account, email webmaster (at) heavymetalradio (dot) com or send an administrator a private message. Tell us whether you want your posts removed too.

How long we keep things

Account details stay until you ask us to delete them. Shouts, posts, comments, ratings and play history are part of the station’s history. Some of it goes back to 2011, carried over from the old site, and it stays unless you ask us to remove yours.

Visit counts keep their details for 90 days. After that, only daily totals remain, such as how many visits a page got.

Backups of the site are kept for up to 90 days, so anything deleted is gone from them within 90 days too.

Security

Passwords are hashed, the site runs over HTTPS, and only administrators can get at account data. No system is perfectly secure (castles had the same problem), but we take reasonable care.

Who can join

Accounts are for people 18 and over, and we don’t knowingly keep information about anyone younger. If we find out someone under 18 has an account, we delete it. Think we’ve missed one? Email webmaster (at) heavymetalradio (dot) com.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version goes here with a new date at the top. Questions? Email webmaster (at) heavymetalradio (dot) com or send an administrator a private message. We’re a metal station, not a data broker.

This service is designed, intended, and optimized strictly for consumers located within North America.

The golden rule: requests cost points, and you earn points by pitching in. No blood oath, no goat, no signing anything in anything. Just be a useful member of the horde.

Earning points

• Sign up: +50. A one-time welcome bonus, enough for your first 10 requests before you’ve lifted a finger. Consider it your starter pack of devil horns.
• Rate a song: +1. The first time you rate each song. Change your mind later all you like; rating the same song twice doesn’t pay twice.
• Comment on a song: +2. Tell the world exactly how that riff rearranged your skeleton. Comments earn up to 10 points an hour; after that you’re commenting purely for the love of the craft.
• Post in the forum: +2 per new topic or reply.
• Scream in the Scream Zone: +1. Your first 10 shouts a day earn a point each, then one point per 5 minutes. Screaming into the void is free. Getting paid for it has a cooldown.
• Submit lyrics: +5 once a moderator approves them. Yes, we check. If you typed “RAAAARGH” for four minutes, it had better actually be the lyric.
• Write a review: +50 once a moderator publishes it. Edit it as often as you like afterwards; it only pays once.

Spending points

• Request a song: 5 points. It goes straight into the station’s queue. If the queue is down, you get your points back automatically, because we’re metalheads, not monsters.
• Same artist: 10 points. Already in the queue, or played in the last hour: it waits about an hour.
• Already in the queue: can’t be requested. It’s coming. Patience is also metal.
• Played recently: can’t be requested. In the last 8 hours, or another version in the last 4. The song’s row says when it’s back.
• Your rank sets how many can wait. Each rank can have a set number of requests in the queue at once (see Ranks below). Once one plays, you can request another. Nobody gets to fill the whole night with Manowar. Not even you.

Ranks

Your rank depends on how many points you’re holding right now, and it sets how many of your requests can wait in the queue at once:

• Limbo: under 200, 5 requests waiting. Where the broke and the brand new wander, signup bonus and all. At least the music’s good.
• Headbanger: 200 and up, 10 requests waiting.
• Riffmaster: 500 and up, 15 requests waiting.
• Metal Veteran: 1,000 and up, 20 requests waiting.
• Metal Elite: 5,000 and up, 30 requests waiting.
• Metal Legend: 10,000 and up, 50 requests waiting. Bards will sing of you. Probably off-key.

Fair warning: ranks follow your current balance, so every request nudges you back down the ladder, and a lower rank means fewer requests waiting. Such is the eternal struggle between glory and hearing “Painkiller” one more time. Choose wisely.

Last updated: September 25, 2026

The short version: HMR plays metal because we love it, not to get rich. If you own the rights to something here and want it gone, tell us and it’s gone.

Licensing

HMR has broadcast under a statutory webcasting license obtained through AudioRealm since 1999, and follows the DMCA’s rules for internet radio.

What HMR is (and isn’t)

• A radio station, not a download site. You can listen live, but you can’t download songs here, and we don’t sell or hand out recordings. If you want the album, buy the album. The band will thank you, possibly with a scream.
• Privately funded. The station runs on its owners’ money and stubbornness. The only money coming in is the small commission Amazon pays when someone buys an album through one of our cover links.
• Here to promote the music. Every song we play is a plug for the artists, labels and distributors behind it. We like to think a few of you have bought an album because you heard it here first.

Reviews, comments and lyrics

Reviews, comments and ratings are the opinions of the members who wrote them, not of the station. Lyrics are submitted by members for reference, commentary and discussion, and they remain the property of the people who wrote them.

Artwork and trademarks

Album art, band logos and other images belong to their owners and appear here only to identify the music. Every logo you can’t read belongs to someone who worked very hard to make it that way.

Rights holders: want something removed?

Recordings, artwork, lyrics or anything else will be taken down on request. No arguments, no hard feelings. Email webmaster (at) heavymetalradio (dot) com saying what you’d like removed and where it appears.

The small print

Everything here is provided as is. We do our best to keep it accurate, but we make no promises about uptime, accuracy, or your neighbors’ tolerance for volume. Listen responsibly: you only get one pair of ears.

Last updated: September 25, 2026

The short version: the rules exist so the station runs fairly for everyone, and they can change without notice. Crank the volume, not the attitude.

Why there are rules at all

Heavy Metal Radio is a shared space: one stream, one request queue, one Scream Zone, and a lot of people with very strong opinions about guitar tone. The rules keep that fair and keep the site running smoothly. They aren’t there to spoil anyone’s fun; that’s what the neighbors are for.

Rules can change

• Without notice. When something starts causing problems, we may add a rule or change one, sometimes on the spot.
• It’s not personal. If a new rule changes how you use the site, it’s a response to how the site is being used, not a verdict on you. Please don’t take it as a diss track.
• The current version is the one that counts. It lives right here in the FAQ. Checking in now and then is cheaper than finding out the hard way.

Who enforces them

The site’s moderators and administrators. Depending on what happened, they can:

• Remove shouts, forum posts, song comments and lyrics.
• Take back points that were earned by breaking the rules.
• Ban you from the Scream Zone by username or IP address.
• Suspend your account, which locks you out of logging in, starting immediately. Your old posts stay put; you just stop adding to them.

How we should all behave is covered in the Code of conduct below. It’s short. Read it before you find yourself starring in it.

Questions?

Send an administrator a private message. Arguing with a rule is fine; arguing with it in the Scream Zone at 3 a.m. in all caps is less effective than you’d think.

Last updated: September 25, 2026

The short version: be respectful, be honest, one account per person. Break the first two badly enough and you’re gone for good. Break the third and you get exactly one warning.

Heavy Metal Radio is free to listen to, and has been for over twenty-five years. It runs on the personal time and money of its administrators, moderators and contributors. The occasional Amazon commission doesn’t come close to covering it, so it’s a labour of love, not a business plan. In return, we ask that you follow these rules:

1. Be respectful

You’re getting something for free, so please be on your best behavior. Everyone here wants to be here without being harassed.

• Not everyone shares your views on music, politics, religion or humor. Yes, even about which album was the band’s last good one.
• Hateful speech means an immediate and permanent ban. No warning, no appeal, no encore.
• Rude or profane speech can mean a temporary ban. Depending on how bad it was and how often it happens, temporary can become permanent.
• This covers everything you write here: shouts, forum posts, song comments, request dedications and private messages. Save the aggression for the mosh pit, where it belongs.

2. Be honest

We frown heavily on hackers and spammers, and we’ve had a lot of practice frowning.

• No attacks on the site. Any attempt to get around the site’s security, get into accounts that aren’t yours, or mess with the stream or request queue gets your account and your IP address banned permanently.
• No spam or advertising. Posting for commercial gain, whether selling, promoting or link-dropping, gets the same permanent ban. The only thing being plugged around here is a guitar.

3. One account per person

Running extra accounts to get around the point system, whether to stack up sign-up bonuses, request more songs or boost your own ratings, is dishonest and unfair to everyone waiting in the queue.

1. First offence: one warning.
2. Second offence: a permanent ban. Every one of your accounts, all at once. Consider yourself unplugged.

That’s it

The rules are simple and absolute. Follow them and you’ll never hear from us, except through your speakers.

The short version: the forum is for talking metal with everyone; Messages are your private conversations. Both keep the music playing while you use them.

The forum

• Anyone can read it; posting needs an account. Posts that are new since your last visit are marked, and Jump to the first unread takes you there.
• Writing: bold, italics, links, quotes, lists and spoilers from the toolbar, pictures up to 5 MB, and the emoji picker with our own metal emoji. Paste a YouTube, Spotify or Bandcamp link on its own line for a player; it loads only when you press play. Your draft is kept in your browser until you post.
• @mentions: type @ and a few letters of a name, then pick the member. They’re told on the bell.
• Under every post: React, Quote and Reply. Select some words in a post before pressing Quote to quote just those.
• Editing: you can edit your own posts any time; they’re marked “Edited”.
• Polls, bookmarks and search: add a poll when you start a topic, bookmark posts or whole topics (your list is on your Profile page), and search from the forum page.

Following, and the bell

• You follow the topics you start or reply to. In each topic you can choose Watching (every new post), Following (replies to you, mentions and quotes) or Muted.
• On a category page, Watch new topics tells you about every new topic there.
• The bell next to the envelope collects replies, mentions, quotes, reactions to your posts and moving up a rank.

Messages

• The envelope shows your latest conversations; New message starts one with one person or a group of up to 20.
• You see when someone is typing and when they’ve read your message. On a computer, a conversation can open in a small window that stays open while you move around the site.
• You can mute a conversation, leave a group, delete a conversation from your list, or block someone.

Emails

We email you about private messages, replies to your topics, and mentions or quotes, never for what you’ve already seen on the site. Every email has a stop link, and the switches are on your Profile page under Email settings.

Reports and moderators

See something that breaks the rules? Use Report under the post or next to the message. Moderators see only what you reported, never the rest of a private conversation, and the member isn’t told who reported it. Members who break the rules can be silenced for a while, and they’re told why.

More in General rules and the Code of conduct.