Plus Pages

Monday, September 3, 2012

Aggregators Help Radio Reach Online Audiences


For the radio industry, there may be no better symbol for the challenges of adapting to the digital age than two candy-colored mobile apps, writes Ben Sisario in  the NYTimes.

The apps, iHeartRadio and TuneIn, are aggregators — conduits for thousands of online radio streams. With a few taps on a smartphone, a listener can dart among a pop station in New York, gospel in Atlanta and talk almost anywhere.

Tune-In logo
Both have quickly amassed big audiences. TuneIn, which offers 70,000 streams from around the world, announced last month that it has 40 million monthly users. IHeartRadio, owned by the broadcasting giant Clear Channel Communications, has been downloaded 95 million times and has attracted more than 12 million registered users.

For broadcasters, these aggregators can help reach audiences in the growing but increasingly fragmented world of online radio, which can mean anything from a customized playlist on Pandora or Spotify to an iTunes stream.

At the same time, many broadcasters say they worry about the rising costs of online royalties; the plans of the companies behind the apps; and the possibility of being lost within the aggregators, like needles in enormous digital haystacks.

No comments:

Post a Comment