Station IDs & Jingles for Internet Radio Stations

Radio imaging is the set of short produced pieces that tell listeners which station they are hearing: station IDs, sweepers, liners and the music beds under them. For an internet radio station with no call letters, imaging is how a listener who joins mid-song learns your name. JingleLark is an online AI jingle maker for small stations: it reads your script in one of 24 radio voices and mixes it with an intro, a music bed and an outro from a library of 88 sounds, so you get a finished station ID, sweeper or liner instead of a bare voiceover.

One internet station's starter imaging, made in JingleLark

These four pieces were made for one made-up online station, Lanternwick Radio, with the same voices, sound library and mixing that every JingleLark account uses. Each one is a single voiceover of under 220 characters, so each cost one credit. Durations and loudness were measured on the downloaded files with ffprobe and the EBU R128 meter in FFmpeg.

Lanternwick Radio is a made-up name used only for these examples. Swap in your own station name, slogan and address in the same script.

How to write a station ID when you have no call letters

Licensed stations open their ID with call letters. An internet station has none, so the ID has to carry the name on its own. A Reddit thread asking for an internet radio imaging starter put it simply: the name of the station and a slogan in place of call letters. Patterns that work:

• Name only, for the shortest ID: "Lanternwick Radio."
• Name plus slogan: "This is Lanternwick Radio. Indie, folk and the songs in between."
• Name plus what you play, so a new listener knows they found the right stream: "Lanternwick Radio, all indie, all day."
• Name plus where to find you: "Lanternwick Radio, streaming worldwide at lanternwickradio.com."
• Name plus the hour, for a top-of-hour ID: "It's the top of the hour on Lanternwick Radio."

Licensed US stations also have to air a legal ID with call letters and city; internet-only streams are not covered by that FCC rule. The details, with the rule text, are in our station identification guide.

How to put your web address in the script

We wrote the same liner three ways and had the Nathan voice read each one once. Then we ran every take through an automatic speech-to-text check (Whisper) to see what a listener would hear.

All three came back as the right address, so you can type the domain the way it is spelled. Adding "www" made the read 0.8 seconds longer for nothing; leave it out. If your name is an invented word, put a slogan or the name on its own earlier in the script, so the listener has heard it once before the address.

The speech-to-text check is a machine test, not a human one. Listen to your own take before you mix it; if a word comes out wrong, spell it the way it sounds and generate again.

What does a starter imaging package cost for an internet radio station?

There are three ways to get imaging: record and edit it yourself, hire a voice or buy a produced package, or make it with an AI tool. This section works out the third. A new internet station does not need a 50-piece package on day one; here is one starter set and what it uses in JingleLark, where each voiceover of up to 220 characters is one credit and mixing, remixing and downloads do not use credits.

Twelve credits fit inside the Starter pack, $14.9 for 50 credits, with 38 left for new liners later. That works out to about $3.58 of credits for the whole set. Credit packs are one-time payments, not a subscription, and credits never expire.

Because mixing is free, one voiceover can become several versions: the same ID over a calm bed for overnight and over a rock bed for drive time costs one credit, not two. A new account gets one free credit to try a voice first.

Weighing this against hiring a voice or buying a produced package? See AI station imaging vs hiring a voice.

When to make imaging while you launch the station

Make it once the name, the music and the web address are settled, and before your first public stream. A listener who arrives from a directory or a shared link in the middle of a song has no dial position to remember, only the name they hear.

Three pieces are enough to go live: a station ID, a sweeper and a web address liner. Add request liners, show tags and seasonal IDs once you know which shows you run. The full list of imaging elements and how long each should be is in our radio imaging guide.

Getting the files into your playout software

Every piece downloads as MP3 or WAV. The WAV is converted in your browser from the same mix as the MP3, for players that prefer WAV files; it is not a separate higher-quality master. The mix is loudness-normalized with a -16 LUFS target and a -1.5 dB true-peak ceiling; our four samples above measured between -17.8 and -16.2 LUFS, so set the jingle level once in your playout and leave it.

Step-by-step instructions for AzuraCast, RadioDJ, mAirList and PlayIt Live are in our guide to adding jingles to playout software.

Make each piece

For station IDs at different lengths, use the radio station ID maker.

For sweepers and liners between songs, use the radio sweeper and liner generator.

Running a licensed community or LPFM station? See imaging for community and LPFM radio.

Internet radio imaging FAQ