It will be difficult to measure the brand lift, but, the free online radio service TuneIn has signed on 20 more broadcasting partners, bringing its portfolio to more than 600 companies. The distributor now claims to carry more than 70,000 stations worldwide, an increase of 52% over the last 12 months. This takes radio ads that much further into the digital stream.
What TuneIn does differently from either Spotify or Pandora is to provide what it calls a “lean-back experience”: Users need not generate their own playlists, they can simply live-stream existing stations. This is significant because while Pandora and Spotify duke it out, TuneIn is topping the charts on platforms like iPhone. If we take the iPhone user to be a media-savvy demographic, 6.6% of iPhone users in October used it over Pandora (5.8) and Spotify (3.5), according to analytics company Onavo and as reported in GigaOm. iPad users rate it highly in forums for its local reach, e.g., “I prefer tune in for the local station search, priceless when traveling and looking for local radio stations for news/weather/traffic/social/etc.”
The TuneIn app includes ads (not instream), and does not include the ability to record radio, which the $.99 TuneIn Pro does allow.
The two most significant new partners are FOX News Radio and Bloomberg Radio. The FOX News Radio deal includes such syndicated shows as FOX News Talk, Kilmeade and Friends with Brian Kilmeade, The John Gibson Show, The Tom Sullivan Show, FOX Across America with Spencer Hughes and The Alan Colmes Show. All programs broadcast on Bloomberg Radio and its affiliated station are now available on TuneIn.
As Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports, the free online radio service will now carry programming from 40 CBS Radio news, talk and sports stations across the country, claiming at least one in every top 10 market, on a non-exclusive basis.
TuneIn lets people listen to the world's music, sports, talk and news from wherever they are, with over 70,000 AM, FM, HD and Internet radio stations and more than two million on-demand programs streaming from every continent. The company's mobile apps are ranked in the top five in the App Store's Music category across 82 countries and territories. The company raised venture funding from Sequoia Capital in late 2010 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.
Among the other new partners, key broadcasters include:
- GoRadio.com, with four radio stations: Downhome, indigo, Meta and #ALLIN
- Monocle 24, headquartered in London, with global affairs, business, culture and design programming
- Public Radio Exchange (PRX), with signature programs including The Moth Radio Hour, Sound Opinions, State of the Re:Union, Snap Judgment, American Routes and WTF with Marc Maron
- 181.FM, "True R&B" Internet radio, with 79 stations
- AddictedToRadio, a free Internet radio service with 75 stations, including Top 40/Pop, R&B/Hip-Hop, Rock, Dance (EDM), Dance (Old School), Decades (70s-90s), Blues/Jazz, Country/Americana, Oldies (20s-60s), Latin/World/Reggae, Classical/Relaxing and News/Talk/Info
- AccuRadio, with 650 channels of customizable online radio that listeners can mix and match to create custom music mixes
