(debian Lenny with mplayer & on another box, Realplayer10 as well)
odd that some stations play with standalone realplayer, others with flashplayer, yet others eg classicfm (UK) nothing at all, (I've emailed them about it).

has anyone else any experience with this?

A related point is that I'm concerned (instinctively) that mplayer & realplayer may conflict on a system I just built for a friend although I have no evidence for this. I can take mplayer off via apt- but if I needed to remove realplayer (taken from source into /usr/local) how would I deal with links to it from eg iceweasel? I suppose I'm really asking if there's a way to reliably remove any software built from source. -Phil

Try the xine-mozilla-plugin or media player connectivity extension. mplayer and realplayer don't work too well with streaming media. Of course, there are sites, where pretty much no player will work, then would be the time to try something through wine if you're desperate.

Thanks, got xine-mozilla-plugin & found mediaplayerconnectivity 0.8.3, going for it.