But for those of us with no interest in touching RealPlayer with a digital ten foot  pole, there is a reasonably straightforward way to play the streams without having to sell your soul, and what’s more it uses the geekiest media player around; VLC.

If you aren’t aware of VLC, it pretty much plays everything. To download VLC follow this link.

Once you’ve installed the the program, open it up and click Media, then Streaming.

Change the filter drop down menu to All Files.

Then select your stream and click Play.

  Then here simply click the Play Locally box.

Then stream.

And your stream should begin playing. This works for RM/RAM audio, but not for all video due to the  issues associated with RealPlayer’s closed source codec. But while there’s no consistently easy escape from RealPlayer for our eyes, at least our ears can enjoy uninterrupted sound without ever having to click on that silly little speech bubble icon again.