Now 4 companies restrict access to their stations on TuneIn, CBS, Townsquare, Univision, and Clear Channel. I'm glad these companies are developing their own apps, it's a lot easier to have 1 app for 100 stations than to have 1 app per station, but I don't think these guys should eliminate the competition outright. I'm predicting a similar thing will happen to Cumulus when their stations finally get on IHeart Radio. How many stations do Greater Media, Cumulus Media, Clear Channel, and CBS own in Detroit? It certainly doesn't look like there will be that much that can be listened to from Detroit after IHeart gets Cumulus and Greater Media on board, which should start sometime next month. If all the companies mentioned at the beginning of this thread were active in a single market, all that will be listed on TuneIn are non-commercial stations and a handfull of am stations, probably mostly religious. Do we really want that?
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isn't this getting rediculous?
- Thread starter bobdavcav
- Start date
One of two things will happen: Either TuneIn will sink, or iHeartRadio and the other separate apps the corporate owners are developing will flop. Personally, I think it gives the mid-major to independently owned stations a chance to have even bigger success, given how much listening is now happening through mobile devices.
Not having access to the large corporate-owned stations has not affected my TuneIn listening whatsoever, mainly because I know how vanilla those stations can be and I'd avoid them even if they were on TuneIn. I look for stations with some personality to them, and having access to stations all over the country and, indeed, the world, allows me and other TuneIn listeners to do that.
On the other hand, you could consider just about anyone on this forum, myself included, to be "power listeners" who are tuning into radio in a completely different way than your average listeners. So the migration to iHeartRadio may be one that doesn't affect that many people, though TuneIn is in my opinion a vastly superior app in terms of stability, sound quality and user friendliness.
Not having access to the large corporate-owned stations has not affected my TuneIn listening whatsoever, mainly because I know how vanilla those stations can be and I'd avoid them even if they were on TuneIn. I look for stations with some personality to them, and having access to stations all over the country and, indeed, the world, allows me and other TuneIn listeners to do that.
On the other hand, you could consider just about anyone on this forum, myself included, to be "power listeners" who are tuning into radio in a completely different way than your average listeners. So the migration to iHeartRadio may be one that doesn't affect that many people, though TuneIn is in my opinion a vastly superior app in terms of stability, sound quality and user friendliness.
I would have to agree with you on all points of your last paragraph, TuneIn has been my favorite app since the day I got it. No company even comes close to the nice design, sound quality is awesome, although radio pup and radio.com are good too, especially with the update to radio.com last week. I don't experience crashing with that app like so many others do, but I really don't like the design. Radio Pup has some redundancies and some other issues, but overall the design is nice. IHeart radio needs to work out some of the kinks in the market list with VoiceOver, and if they want more companies on the app, they are going to need to redo the market sellection, it's rather tedious as it currently is.whitfm said:
whitfm said:
TuneIn's interface is very nice and very quick. I bought TuneIn Pro recently. Not much of a difference really, but I like supporting companies that make good products. The recording feature does come in handy for recording pieces of songs I don't recognize and also do not have a listed title so I can look them up later. Iheartradio is rather annoying to use in my opinion. It lacks features and the custom stations option seems poorly implemented compared to their competitors. Not to mention the fact that they are probably paying a fortune to offer custom stations commercial free without an inactivity timer. However, I think you are right. The average listener doesn't seem to mind IHeart.
I think Iheart will backfire for the stations jumping on board. It blows my mind that Clear Channel's competitors are willing to put their stations exclusively on a competitors service instead over a neutral service such as TuneIn. Clear Channel is no doubt just going to use those stations to promote their own content. Similar to what CBS did to AOL Radio.
bobdavcav said:
I have not seen a date on when it is supposed to happen. I actually thought it was going to happen some time ago, but apparently not.
I have experimented with IHeart's custum stations, and I don't mind them. I just like to see what it comes up with and then move on. Someone on this board a while ago started a topic saying that internet radio wasn't real radio. I'd have to dissagree, except for these custum stations. I don't mind the corperate sound, except when every station sounds the same. CC mixes it up on their ACs somewhat, and there are a few good ones out there. I kind of wonder if sometime in the future Entercom will pair up with CBS, seems like they deal with each other a lot. That would be another blow to TuneIn.
I agree. The custom stations are not bad. They just don't have the options and customization that their competitors offer. It has a good appearance, but it lacks the power under the hood. Such as how you can't add more than one artist and can't unban songs. It's more like a quick playlist than a real station.bobdavcav said:
Highly possible. Poor TuneIn. They have given a lot to the Internet Radio world and now they are getting slowly ripped apart. They are what shoutcast could have been.bobdavcav said:
Has anyone read the user agreement or ToS provided by Iheart lately? I noticed when I was scanning them the other day that there are a lot of sections that mention and have to deal with subscriptions. It gives the impression that they have much larger plans for Iheart than was first indicated.
Even without some of the big corporate groups, TuneIn still has some pretty strong advantages. First, they are international, so users can listen to stations in virtually every part of the world that offers streaming radio. Second, they can access independent station owners and the ones that solely webcast, such as Soma FM and Radio Paradise. Third, they also offer streaming of various podcasts. And fourth, it is a reliable service/app. Very stable, unlike some others, and it has been maintained well and has gotten better and better.
I have often raved about IHeartRadio here. It is a very good, reliable streaming app, and Clear Channel has done a great job all around. CBS' Radio.com has gotten better, but it took them roughly six months (and tons of trashing by users on Android market) to get it done. Still not a great app, and the stations don't sound that great, but it is better, and also the only option for listening to CBS streams.
I currently have TuneIn, IHeartRadio, Radio.com, Pandora and 8Tracks (user-uploaded playlists) on my phone, all of which I use for different things. Tough to keep track of it all!
I have often raved about IHeartRadio here. It is a very good, reliable streaming app, and Clear Channel has done a great job all around. CBS' Radio.com has gotten better, but it took them roughly six months (and tons of trashing by users on Android market) to get it done. Still not a great app, and the stations don't sound that great, but it is better, and also the only option for listening to CBS streams.
I currently have TuneIn, IHeartRadio, Radio.com, Pandora and 8Tracks (user-uploaded playlists) on my phone, all of which I use for different things. Tough to keep track of it all!
Michael said:
In time consolidation will probably occur. Right now everyone thinks they can do streaming better than anyone else. Whether or not any of these companies will be profitable remains to be seen.
TuneIn seems to be doing it right. Broadcasters with the exception of CC will probably come back once they realize reach is also important.
Chuck said:
Contact Clear Channel. They've been adding a few independent stations, such as WGN and WVON in Chicago.
FightingIrish said:
Yep, however just so you know they have very strict streaming requirements such as meta data being sent with the stream.. Stream in an HE-AAC format and they also require you to stream via Akamai or Triton Digital's hosting and depending on the terms, you can not be listed in other directories such as Tune in etc.
Perfect transition into what I was going to say. If I was forced to restrict my stations on TuneIn, I wouldn't list my station on IHeart. However, it looks like the stations are on IHeart Radio now, at least Greater Media's stations. No sign of the Cumulus stations yet. HMM, are you saying that CC has switched to streamtheworld too? I will check that out. I wonder what's holding up Cumulus. It could be that they aren't all on streamtheworld?
I guess my editing time expired. Anyway, just checked and can't get CC through STW. I don't know if it is just my phone or what, but the Greater Media stations all sound like am stations. They're in full quality on TuneIn, but for some reason I can't get them in stereo, even though they broadcast in stereo.
bobdavcav said:
Clear Channel still uses Akamai for hosting of their streams. iHeart supports either Akamai or Streamtheworld for the source.
I also heard (but haven't confirmed) that Clear Channel also requires the use of a streaming appliance to encode the stream.
My stations have been on TuneIn since they were RadioTime and I have known Scott Fleischer over there since day one and his guys have always went over and above to make sure we were happy with everything. I can't say enough good things about them and if CBS and others pull their stations from TuneIn it just levels the playing field a little and allows the Independent Stations and groups like mine to get featured more often...
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