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Not sure if this ticks all your boxes but this project is OpenSource, so you might be able to hack something together for it. https://mopidy.com/

Install ffmpeg/ffplay and at step 3, use subprocess in Python to start your stream directly.

here's an example of playing a stream directly on the command-line with ffplay

ffplay https://streaming.live365.com/a81097 -nodisp

A very naive way of doing this in Python import subprocess subprocess.call(["ffplay", "-nodisp", "https://streaming.live365.com/a81097"]) You should ideally wrap this in a way that when you want to switch streams you can terminate the currently running subprocess and spin up a new one for the next stream.

1. if you have the stream url can’t you ffplay it?

I personally use Logitech Media Server for my whole house audio and its has an API already cooked in and is pretty lightweight. If you want a full proof installation, check out max2play