Audacy stock price

[Kelly A]

I was referencing both. They have been buying podcast platforms instead of improving their existing service. They should be focusing on that. They already saw what buying CBS did for them.

iHeart has the most number of popular podcasts in the country, followed by NPR and the NY Times.
By saying "their existing service" are you referring to just radio? iHeart has a huge head start on Audacy, is well diversified, and by doing so has positioned itself in an enviable position within the competitive media landscape.

 

[vw86]

The difference also is the iHeart app is user friendly, the iHeart original podcasts are pretty good, and iHeart has a fantastic slate of excellent national talent for music formats. Yeah, lots of music stations have nothing local or live. But the content is good.

Audacy talks the iHeart talk, but they have a clunky app that isn't nearly as user friendly, not nearly as much compelling original content, and a much less recognized brand.

 

[JeremyAndrews]

iHeart has the most number of popular podcasts in the country, followed by NPR and the NY Times.
By saying "their existing service" are you referring to just radio? iHeart has a huge head start on Audacy, is well diversified, and by doing so has positioned itself in an enviable position within the competitive media landscape.

In this particular case, I'm talking about Audacy and their platform. It's a technical mess. Instead of spending to improve that, they are buying out podcast platforms.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

The view may be that spending money on outside companies isn't the right approach. iHeart hasn't gone this way. They built their own internal system, branded it as iHeart, and manage it more like a radio network.

iHeart bought Triton Digital, Stuff Media, Voxnest, they are a major investor in Sounder and probably others. Yes they built their own system but a lot of the parts were acquired.

 

[MarkW]

I guess I disagree about the iHeart app being user friendly. The user experience probably varies based on the type of device being used, but I've found the search functionality to be very clunky. Also, on certain devices, non-iHM radio stations often will not play at all or suffer from inferior audio quality.

 

[CTListener]

Also, on certain devices, non-iHM radio stations often will not play at all or suffer from inferior audio quality.

Wouldn't be surprised if that's intentional. On Audacy's app (at least on Xfinity Flex), the non-Audacy stations -- mostly Cumulus, but also from several other smaller ownership groups -- are at the bottom of each genre's station list. In genres like CHR and country, that means a lot of scrolling before the user sees anything but Audacy stations, which likely means lots of users will never know the outsiders' stations exist.

 

[bobdavcav]

I've never understood the way stations are listed in apps. That's why I've always liked Tunein, they list the stations by frequency, though I don't like that they don't show the frequency anymore. The other thing I don't like about iHeart is that they don't break up their markets. Again, here's where Tunein shines. You tap the state, then you tap the market you want. I can't speak for Audacy in any of this as I've had the app for several years but never use it. The other thing that has always rubbed me the wrong way about iHeart is that they seem to drive traffic to the brands that are already the most popular. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but they used to have a scan feature on the app, but when activated, it would go to their large market stations, not the station that was most similar to the one you were listening to. For example, if I were listening to Portlandd's Z100, the stations I would recommend would not be Z100 New York, KIIS Los Angeles, and Kiss Chicago. Last time I did a comparison, they would have been what was then Channel 96.1 Charlotte, Hot 107.9 Syracuse, and Kiss 106.7 Rochester, as to me those were the ones that sounded the most similar.

 

[CTListener]

I've never understood the way stations are listed in apps. That's why I've always liked Tunein, they list the stations by frequency, though I don't like that they don't show the frequency anymore. The other thing I don't like about iHeart is that they don't break up their markets. Again, here's where Tunein shines. You tap the state, then you tap the market you want. I can't speak for Audacy in any of this as I've had the app for several years but never use it. The other thing that has always rubbed me the wrong way about iHeart is that they seem to drive traffic to the brands that are already the most popular. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but they used to have a scan feature on the app, but when activated, it would go to their large market stations, not the station that was most similar to the one you were listening to. For example, if I were listening to Portlandd's Z100, the stations I would recommend would not be Z100 New York, KIIS Los Angeles, and Kiss Chicago. Last time I did a comparison, they would have been what was then Channel 96.1 Charlotte, Hot 107.9 Syracuse, and Kiss 106.7 Rochester, as to me those were the ones that sounded the most similar.

The Audacy app greets me with a lineup of Boston stations, even though I've been away from Boston except for visits since 1978. Of course the last four stations listed are Beasley's WROR and WKLB, and independents WMEX and WATD. Come to think of it, the app carries only one station from my tiny market (Hanover/Lebanon/White River Jct.) and that's country WXLF Hartford VT, a Binnie Media property, so Boston would be the closest major market.
The search app lets me search by keyword, city or genre. Another Audacy feature is a grouping of stations that serve as flagships for MLB teams, all available in the clear with no restrictions or added charge for listening to content that MLB itself is charging for. Not sure how they're getting away with that. Does iHeart offer the same baseball play-by-play freebies to its users?

 

[Kelly A]

In this particular case, I'm talking about Audacy and their platform. It's a technical mess. Instead of spending to improve that, they are buying out podcast platforms.

I'm sure there was criticism being tossed around by iHeart critics years ago after launching their streaming app. Much of Audacy's issues are; they're simply late to the party. That, and knowing a little about their corporate culture, management hates spending money on tech. Their interest in being involved in throwing money at tech, is to just buy something, then spend as little as possible after that.
That mindset is a lot of the reason they've been victims of ransomware attacks twice already.

 

[JeremyAndrews]

The iHeart app was actually pretty good in the early days for it's time. Before all of the excess features were added, it was a pretty simple and easy to use app and it flowed pretty well. TuneIn replaced Wunderradio, which was an excellent app before stations started insisting on having their own app. Could even login and access SiriusXM streams through it. SiriusXM didn't have an app at the time,

 

[vw86]

The biggest thing I miss about TuneIn is the old rewind feature. Once you started a stream, you could essentially DVR rewind back about a half hour. At first the feature was disabled on Cumulus stations, then a few months ago it went away completely for all live stations.

 

[bobdavcav]

I do think Tunein has gone downhill in the last several years, but still an overall pretty good app. I used that rewind feature occasionally, but the other thing I found really cool was the record feature. Unfortunately, you couldn't export your recordings outside of the app, but what I found really cool was that I could pause the stream for up to half an hour while still recording. If I wanted to pause something for a bit, I could hear what I missed for the first time on the recording.