Radio On!
Media Apps for Android Tablets, Part IV
TuneIn app. Note recording functions in lower screen
Bring up the subject of radio with almost anybody, and you’re virtually guaranteed to strike a vein of nostalgia. Some deep-seated aspect of human nature must account for this. Maybe radio creates vivid memories by making listeners stretch their imaginations… or maybe the fact that we all spent our impressionable adolescences riding around in cars with the radio cranked up had a lasting influence. But whatever the explanation may be, everyone has a favorite radio show from the good old days. And were the good old days the age of Jack Benny in his Maxwell, Jonathan Richman in his Plymouth Roadrunner, or something in between? You make the call.
Speaking for ourselves, we spent our childhood mornings with Cordic & Company on KDKA and our childhood evenings with WAMO’s Porky Chedwick, the Daddy-O of the Raddy-o… happy hours, all of them. And it may be a case of youth wasted on the young, but some of our most pleasant memories involve warm summer nights with the top of the Spitfire folded back, a pretty girl in the shotgun seat, and WABC coming in clear. You can substitute parts of that picture, such as car model, station, or season, to build your own Edenic vision. Here’s how Richman put it:
I’m in love with Massachusetts
And the neon when it’s cold outside
And the highway when it’s late at night
Got the radio on
I’m like the roadrunner…
Radio on!
We know just how he feels.
These days the common complaint is that radio has become homogenized and corporate, and that all the character’s been drained out of it. But that didn’t stop us from poking around in the world of radio apps, and we have good news to report: the lunatic fringe lives… and there have never been more ways to find the lunatics. Or the mainstream.
Streaming audio has been part of the Internet since the ’90s, so like radio itself, the concept isn’t new. Today, the challenge is keeping up with the deluge of different ways you can stream radio onto your Android tablet… and finding enough time to listen. Choices range from traditional programming at local radio stations all the way to apps that know what you want to hear before you do.
Networks
Several radio networks have built Android apps, and if you like what they offer, maybe you won’t need to look any further.
A subsidiary of CBS called Radio.com offers a free Android app which provides access to 19 genres and 600 affiliated stations. The CBS network includes WINS in New York, KROQ in Los Angeles, and lots of different stations in between. Many of the most popular CBS stations seem to focus on sports, news, or talk, but there’s plenty of music, too. A similar Android app accessing the same network is private-labeled by Yahoo! under the name of Yahoo! Music Radio.
Clear Channel, the media giant that dominates American radio and billboards, offers a free app called iHeartRadio which connects to more than 750 affiliated radio stations. The iHeartRadio app is pretty robust: it allows searching by genre, location, and station. Clear Channel stations represent a broad range of musical styles—classic rock, alternative, adult contemporary, and so forth—although it’s our impression that their basic philosophy is to rotate the top 40 songs in most of these categories round the clock.
Bob Pittman, Clear Channel’s chairman of media and entertainment platforms, recently told the Los Angeles Times: “Our strategy is to be where the listeners are. They’re on the Web. They’re on Facebook. They’re on Twitter. They’re on their tablets and cell phones. And so are we. Radio is truly America’s companion.” Yes, like billboards.
The satellite radio folks at Sirius XM have a similar strategy—be everywhere—and they offer an Android app as part of their Internet Radio package, which provides online access to 120 commercial-free channels. The package will add $3.00 to your monthly bill if you’re already a Sirius subscriber, or as a standalone will run you $13.00 per month. Fans of this space know how we hate to spend money for content, but losing the commercials is arguably worth $150 a year, and you can’t hear Sirius programming any other way, at least not legally. If you’re a fan of the Howard Stern Show (or any of the 119 other channels) and want to investigate, you can try the Sirius Android app for free for seven days.
NPR, which we’re told has the fastest-growing radio audience in America, offers a free Android app that provides a great way to stay on top of the news and allows you to read stories as well as listen to them. The NPR mobile Web site provides additional functionality, including the ability to access other NPR programs, such as “Fresh Air” or “All Things Considered,” and the ability to replay the most recent hourly newscast.
Like NPR, some other well-regarded radio networks, such as the BBC and Voice of America, have both Android apps and Web sites designed specifically for mobile devices.
Directory Dials
There are two major audio streaming protocols, Shoutcast and Icecast. The lists of stations using one protocol or the other form two large directories of online radio—two big tuner dials, in the parlance of a bygone era.
Shoutcast comes from Nullsoft, the company that developed the Winamp player back in the day. Nullsoft is now a division of AOL, and they claim that upwards of 50,000 stations around the world stream via Shoutcast, which is an awful lot, even allowing for exaggeration. If you listen to one station a day, it will take more than a century to work your way through the list.
Icecast is produced by the Xiph.org Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to developing open source multimedia protocols and programs. We’re told that almost 10,000 stations stream via Icecast, and it’s our impression that a high percentage of them are based outside the U.S. We also get a DIY vibe when we scan the list—lots of the Icecast stations have a homemade look to them, which makes sense, since Icecast is free. All the more fun for the curious listener!
Filed under: GentryMedia •Apps4Tablets •
(Page 1 of 3 pages for this article 1 2 3 >)
Ads
