to counteract all the bs on the web (looking at you AI) about installing VLC player on the rpi zero W to play an audio stream from a url, it is a waste of time, it doesn’t work, and it adds so much garbage to the pi.
instead, i installed mpv, and used that to play the stream to a usb audio stick, (install ALSA for audio abilities, run lsusb to see the device and slot of the item, then select it in dietpi-config, scroll down, choose hw:0,0 Device USB Audio, aplay -l shows the soundcard, card 0 , device 0, speaker-test -D plughw:0,0 -c2 -t sine , that works! )
and I am amazed on how well it works on the tiny rpi zero W
since everyone is sold out of the rpi zero 2w’s i bought the zero for $25 to test it
amazing!