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Audacy stations coming to iHeart

101tm

101tm

radioinsight.com

Audacy Stations Come To iHeartRadio App

Audacy and iHeartMedia have announced that Audacy will bring its radio stations and podcasts to the iHeartRadio app. iHeartMedia says
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com

It’ll be nice to have everything in one place for streaming on the iHeart app. Audacy is supposedly continuing with their app, but I still haven’t come across anyone who likes it, much less uses it.
 
101tm said:
radioinsight.com

Audacy Stations Come To iHeartRadio App

Audacy and iHeartMedia have announced that Audacy will bring its radio stations and podcasts to the iHeartRadio app. iHeartMedia says
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com

It’ll be nice to have everything in one place for streaming on the iHeart app. Audacy is supposedly continuing with their app, but I still haven’t come across anyone who likes it, much less uses it.
Click to expand...
I use it, but largely because the Audacy stations aren't always easily available elsewhere. My use will be less once they are available on iHeart.
 
vw86 said:
It'll be interesting to hear them promote this on air (if they do), especially in markets where both companies have a big presence.
Click to expand...
Yes, this will definitely be interesting. I guess they won't need to keep tagging "spelled A-U-D-A-C-Y" at the end of all their "download our app" spots. From what I hear (I don't have either app) it sounds like iHeart's app is the superior one. Perhaps this will end up spelling the end for the A-U-D-A-C-Y app...
 
The Audacy stations are there (at the bottom of each city page). However, there may be some streams missing. For example, WXRT's Chicago Blues and Soul channel (which was an HD2) is not on IHR. So, seeing as I'm a fan of it, I guess I'm not quite ready to ditch the Audacy app quite yet.
 
Well...I wish Audacy luck with IHeart. Trouble is, as a totally blind person using a screenreader and a desktop computer, I find neither site to be very accessible...
 
I still wonder why they never made the effort to promote radio.com like they tried with Audacy. I realize "radio" might be a bad word on Wall Street, but the promotion was mainly on radio so folks hearing it are using the radio. Being in bankruptcy they don't have shareholders, just debt holders.
 
secondchoice said:
I still wonder why they never made the effort to promote radio.com like they tried with Audacy. I realize "radio" might be a bad word on Wall Street, but the promotion was mainly on radio so folks hearing it are using the radio. Being in bankruptcy they don't have shareholders, just debt holders.
Click to expand...
You could have just stopped after "Wall Street." If a word or concept or strategy doesn't fly with the money changers in the temple of greed known as the NYSE, then it's dead in the water.
 
101tm said:
It’ll be nice to have everything in one place for streaming on the iHeart app. Audacy is supposedly continuing with their app, but I still haven’t come across anyone who likes it, much less uses it.
Click to expand...

We may have been talking about this on Facebook, but I use Audacy for streaming my local Cumulus stations. TuneIn redid its layout a couple years ago and mishmashes my local stations with more distant stations, and iHeart requires me to manually update my location to get my local stations on the app if I've been traveling. With Audacy, I just open it, and the Cumulus and Alpha stations are there. I rarely, however, use the Audacy app on any device but my iPhone. I've been streaming Audacy stations with TuneIn on my desktop since they retured to that platform about two years ago. I did try one of them on iHeart an hour or so ago, and it works fine. They're just a little hard to find right now since iHeart loaded its local station lists with a bunch of streaming only stations.

secondchoice said:
I still wonder why they never made the effort to promote radio.com like they tried with Audacy. I realize "radio" might be a bad word on Wall Street, but the promotion was mainly on radio so folks hearing it are using the radio. Being in bankruptcy they don't have shareholders, just debt holders.
Click to expand...

CBS and Entercom mentioned "Radio.com" at least once-an-hour. Since at least 2015, the CBS stations said, "Always on Radio.com," at the top of every hour when they ran their legal ID's. The Entercom stations added that to their TOH's shortly after taking over CBS Radio and getting its domains. In 2018, Entercom pulled its stations off of TuneIn and, at least to streaming listeners, promoted the move to "Radio.com" relentlessly.
 
ted chittenden said:
Well...I wish Audacy luck with IHeart. Trouble is, as a totally blind person using a screenreader and a desktop computer, I find neither site to be very accessible...
Click to expand...
Are there any sites for radio stations and groups that are more accessible? What are the key components to making a site accessible?
 
Kent said:
CBS and Entercom mentioned "Radio.com" at least once-an-hour. Since at least 2015, the CBS stations said, "Always on Radio.com," at the top of every hour when they ran their legal ID's. The Entercom stations added that to their TOH's shortly after taking over CBS Radio and getting its domains. In 2018, Entercom pulled its stations off of TuneIn and, at least to streaming listeners, promoted the move to "Radio.com" relentlessly.
Click to expand...

Once an hour? iHeart runs promos for its app in every break, often more than once per break. Plus the jocks seem to plug it again every time they crack the mic.

Regardless of whatever else you may think about iHeart, you have to hand it to them, they identified the importance of building a top-tier streaming app and made it a top priority early on, supported by all the co-branded events like the iHeart Music Awards, Podcaster Awards, etc.. By comparison, the Radio.com app, and subsequently the confusingly-named Audacy app, offered far less content, value and visibility, and could be extremely frustrating to use.

I don't know where to find usage statistics but I suspect uptake for both the Radio.com and Audacy apps lagged far, far behind iHeart and never came close to catching up. iHeart already has Cumulus, Public/NPR, and even some of my favorite indie college stations on its app alongside its own stations. Audacy must have decided it made the most sense to join them there than to sink a ton of money into trying to play catch-up, never mind being competitive, with its own app. Whether that app would have been a redesigned Audacy app or resurrected Radio.com app, it would almost certainly be a losing proposition given the huge head start and established user base iHeart has now.
 
This might be temporary. If Audacy ever gets out of bankruptcy, the Cumulus take over will change everything. The cloud company and Audacy should have enough stations to complete with the iHeart app.

IMHO: There never was much loyalty to radio stations unless the was a tremendous personality involved. I believe if folks can get the content they want from another app that is easier to work they will switch until something "better (easier) comes along. In the past radio stations concentrated on the local revenue in their market. Has the web has changed that dynamic or will this end up like "the DotCom" bust for shareholders? If you can answer that: buy options and get rich.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Once an hour? iHeart runs promos for its app in every break, often more than once per break. Plus the jocks seem to plug it again every time they crack the mic.
Click to expand...

Once-an-hour is an industry standard, or at least used to be. Cumulus was required to mention iHeartRadio once-an-hour when it added its stations in 2012.

Theater of My Mind said:
Regardless of whatever else you may think about iHeart, you have to hand it to them, they identified the importance of building a top-tier streaming app and made it a top priority early on, supported by all the co-branded events like the iHeart Music Awards, Podcaster Awards, etc.. By comparison, the Radio.com app, and subsequently the confusingly-named Audacy app, offered far less content, value and visibility, and could be extremely frustrating to use.
Click to expand...

If you want to say Audacy is bad at branding, you won't get any argument out of me. You don't have to go back very far to see posts from me saying Audacy doesn't mean anything to the average person and that the company does a poor job at getting the word out about what it actually is.

The data, by the way, doesn't necessarily support the notion that Audacy is difficult or confusing to use relative to its biggest competition. The iOS app has a 4.5 star average review while iHeart and TuneIn receive 4.8 on average. It's a little less popular, but it beats the pants off of most single station apps. It beats RadioPup, which has a 2.7 average review, by about double. I seem to remember Radio.com getting about a 3.5 average review, though that would be over four years ago. So, my memory might be a tad fuzzy, but Audacy would seem to be better liked than its predecessor. The Android results, by the way, are a little murkier. iHeart and TuneIn average about a 4.6 while Audacy is at a 3.5.

Theater of My Mind said:
I don't know where to find usage statistics but I suspect uptake for both the Radio.com and Audacy apps lagged far, far behind iHeart and never came close to catching up. iHeart already has Cumulus, Public/NPR, and even some of my favorite indie college stations on its app alongside its own stations.
Click to expand...

I haven't been able to find iOS download statistics, but, for Android, Audacy has about 5 million downloads. iHeart has 50 million, and TuneIn has a little over 100 million. So, yeah, the uptake would seem to be pretty far behind. It's about 10 times what RadioPup has in downloads, but half of MyTuner's.

Theater of My Mind said:
Audacy must have decided it made the most sense to join them there than to sink a ton of money into trying to play catch-up, never mind being competitive, with its own app. Whether that app would have been a redesigned Audacy app or resurrected Radio.com app, it would almost certainly be a losing proposition given the huge head start and established user base iHeart has now.
Click to expand...

Ultimately, you need to be where your audience is. I've never thought platform exclusivity was a recipe for winning. Townsquare seems to still be digging in on RadioPup, which looks like iHeart looked 15 years ago, but even it has been dragged into reality. Townsquare stations are now available on TuneIn on certain platforms, like Roku.
 
davideduardo said:
Are there any sites for radio stations and groups that are more accessible? What are the key components to making a site accessible?
Click to expand...

To answer your first question, the most accessible radio listening sites I've ever visited belong to some of the aggregators. Radio-locator.com, while it doesn't use headers or regions, is the most accessible radio station site I've ever visited. Pretty much everything on there is text-based (except for the maps--but signal strengths are assigned a number I can read), all of the links are easily and properly marked for screenreaders, and you don't have Flash or refreshing bars moving up and down the pages all of the time.

Worldradiomap.com is another highly accessible site. While it has pages that have thousands of links, the vast majority of those links are properly marked so that screenreader users can easily find what they are looking for.

In the noncommercial sector, Kevin Kelley's publicradiofan.com is very accessible. While some pages have thousands of links, some graphical, nearly all are properly marked for screenreader users.

From my perspective as a blind user, a site that doesn't use a lot of shockwave objects, doesn't refresh itself every minute or so, properly labels links and graphs so that I know what I'm getting when I click on one, and that relies primarily on text information outside of graphs (even with AI, screenreading software still has a difficult time reading text inside of pictures) will earn my attention. The proper use of headers and regions so the screenreader user can zero in on what he/she wants is icing on the cake.

I should note that if PDF documents are not properly marked, they can also give me and other blind people trouble.

Anyway, a good website to visit if you (or anyone else) wants to learn more about how to make sites accessible is

www.w3.org

Accessibility

This page gives a high-level introduction to web accessibility and what the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) does.
www.w3.org www.w3.org

Finally, there is a site that has annually been evaluating "a million home pages" for accessibility since, I believe, 2019.

WebAIM: The WebAIM Million - The 2025 report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pages

webaim.org webaim.org

It is an excellent place to start if you wish to see how one's home page is ranked in terms of accessibility and, if memory serves, the authors can provide resources if one wishes for more information.
 


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