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TuneIn now showing iHeartRadio stations

K

Kent

Visited TuneIn this morning and found a few iHeartRadio stations that had been long removed from the service and had not even displayed were displaying with full logos and, much like with Apple Music, "iHeartRadio station" was displaying underneath them. I noticed a few missing, but most iHeartRadio properties were displaying wherever I checked. When I actually tried playing them, I still got the message that the stations were unavailable.

Is Hell freezing over and iHeart considering adding its stations to TuneIn, or is TuneIn listing the iHeart stations for another reason, like, maybe, to direct people wanting to hear those stations to its own proprietary streams? Around this time three years ago, the Cumulus stations began popping up on TuneIn after a roughly six year absence in a similar manner. If they appeared in your station list at all, you just saw a pair of headphones. Then, they suddenly started showing updated logos, some of which were obviously not holdovers from 2012. About a month later, almost every Cumulus station appeared on the platform.

Also, I'm no longer seeing the preset groups on TuneIn like I've seen for the last roughly 10 years. When I go to my favorites, I see all of them lumped together. I can't select them based on genre, like I had previously set them up.
 
As of this morning the Iheart stations are all gone from Tunein. Must of been a glitch or maybe a money issue. Back to the Iheart app.
 
spozate900 said:
As of this morning the Iheart stations are all gone from Tunein. Must of been a glitch or maybe a money issue. Back to the Iheart app.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I noticed that, too. Far as I could tell, clicking the iHeart links never actually played the stations. Those links seemed to play the TuneIn stations of the same formats.
 
yeah, had to be a glitch because if they streamed the iHeart owned stations with no contract, that would be a automatic lawsuit from iHeart. iHeart doesn't like to play well with others with their streaming. iHeart views the TuneIn app and Audacy app/site as a competitor. the only stations that you will find streaming on iHeartRadio and TuneIn are stations owned by different companies that had deals with both streaming services, like Cumulus and Salem and a few others.
 
I think the hint was they were already displaying the station logos on Tunein, just we’re still redirecting the listeners to the iHeart Radio app up until today…

Yes! Alexa app wasn’t allowing me since March 2021 to even search iHeart stations, but only stations on Tunein.
 
so does this open the door for iHeartMedia buying out TuneIn and merging iHeartRadio and TuneIn with TuneIn being used for radio stations and iHeartRadio for music and podcast not tied to their radio stations.
 
Will_H_69_9 said:
so does this open the door for iHeartMedia buying out TuneIn and merging iHeartRadio and TuneIn with TuneIn being used for radio stations and iHeartRadio for music and podcast not tied to their radio stations.
Click to expand...

What we need is Radioplayer.
 
Will_H_69_9 said:
so does this open the door for iHeartMedia buying out TuneIn and merging iHeartRadio and TuneIn with TuneIn being used for radio stations and iHeartRadio for music and podcast not tied to their radio stations.
Click to expand...

While TuneIn was pretty openly for sale not that long ago, I don’t see that scenario happening. I suppose it can’t be ruled out, but it doesn’t seem likely.

What it sounds like to me is that iHeart will be selling local direct spots for TuneIn. It will almost certainly be taking a substantial commission for each of those spots before splitting the rest of the revenue with TuneIn.

My understanding is that iHeart requires barter spots on your on-air signal plus an even larger barter of inventory on your stream. I don't know the exact amounts of each, but I have an acquaintance who only listed one of his two stations on iHeart because he didn't want to carry all the iHeart barter on his more popular station. I also understand iHeart can sell spots on your behalf on your stream and takes a large commission on those. If iHeart were to buy TuneIn and shift broadcasters there, it couldn't command nearly the spot load it presently gets. TuneIn does deals with broadcasters, but it also lists them free. Without substantial changes, TuneIn wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative. What this seems to me is more a tacit admission platform exclusivity doesn’t work.
 
RadioPatrol said:
Tunein and Iheart has announced content advertising partnership in the release.
Click to expand...

This is why this is happening. TuneIn was heading down a bad path financially. They had hoped subscriptions would have pumped in some money, but very few people subscribed. They needed to fix the revenue situation, so they cut a deal where iHeart now can sell the TuneIn platform. That's great for iHeart, because it gives them a bigger number to sell, and it's new revenue for TuneIn. Win-win. On the other side, if you're Audacy, you're shaking your head.

Hats off to iHeart for thinking outside the box.

Kent said:
What this seems to me is more a tacit admission platform exclusivity doesn’t work.
Click to expand...

Not sure I agree. iHeart is getting WAY more out of this than any other broadcaster that uses TuneIn.

Maybe iHeart used exclusivity as leverage. In which case it worked.
 
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