iHeartRadio Plus & All Access (On-Demand)

[+48V]

Toss another entrant to the on-demand war on the fire. iHeartRadio just flipped the public live switch on their Plus and All Access service. The on-demand piece uses Napster (Rhapsody) for the backend.

Their claimed standout feature:
"Given that 70 percent of consumers -- which includes users of on demand music services -- have cited radio as their primary source of music discovery, there is finally a service that allows them the convenience and accessibility of merely pushing a button to add a song immediately to their music collection at the same time they hear it on the radio -- something no other music collection service can offer."

Should be interesting...time for another 30-day trial.

Plus - $4.99
All Access - $9.99

 

[uofmtiger]

Toss another entrant to the on-demand war on the fire. iHeartRadio just flipped the public live switch on their Plus and All Access service. The on-demand piece uses Napster (Rhapsody) for the backend.

Their claimed standout feature:
"Given that 70 percent of consumers -- which includes users of on demand music services -- have cited radio as their primary source of music discovery, there is finally a service that allows them the convenience and accessibility of merely pushing a button to add a song immediately to their music collection at the same time they hear it on the radio -- something no other music collection service can offer."

Should be interesting...time for another 30-day trial.

Plus - $4.99
All Access - $9.99

Not much of a feature for me since I never listen to live commercial radio anymore (other than sports). I think I will pass on this one.

 

[+48V]

Not much of a feature for me since I never listen to live commercial radio anymore (other than sports). I think I will pass on this one.

Yeah…no secret that most “commercial” radio sux. Aside from talk/sports and a local college station, my FM/AM tuner(s) for a longest while, go nowhere near the rest of the dial. Like you now, I just used to use my personal music collection exclusively simply because there was nothing better on the radio… antenna radio was/is a wasteland.

That all changed for me at the dawn of internet simulcasts of far away towers and independent listener supported internet radio stations. 17 years ago, radio was reborn for me and while it takes some effort to search & filter, it's not all that difficult to find some tremendously sweet veins of gold. Bleak as one might think, there’s still a good bit of great OTA and internet only radio at our fingertips. Algorithms have come far but nothing beats a well schooled and seasoned DJ. I’ve been listening faithfully to a select few real radio gems for many years. An enormous pool of curation.

Each his own comfort zone. But I think you owe it to yourself to give real radio another shot.

Personally, (“Clear Channel” disdain aside) I have to give them major props for the innovative concept. This is exactly the sort of “outside of the box” service separator feature amongst the herd I have crowed about several threads back. Too bad that it is iHeart instead of Tune-In that broke out with this feature… as the bulk of iHeart’s OTA offering is mainly relegated to their own schlock towers. Even so, with their dumbed conglom offering, I did find a few of my “go to” stations available in their directory.

KCRW (eclectic 24)
KCSN (Cal state branch)
KEXP

Being able to pluck a currently playing track out of the playlist of a great station and toss it into my collection is pretty damn neat. Bite me Shazam! lol And for the shit-ton of masses that don’t mind or even relish in Top Pop 40, this is certainly a gateway drug to lure them into paying for a streaming service. Now, if only the Tune-In directory can finagle this---game over!

I’ve yet to sign on…but I plan on test driving their shtick and UI tonight.

 

[+48V]

Update. First pass with iHeart All Access. V. 7.1.0

--UI is "copycat" yet rudimentary...expected.
--Chromecast & Airplay Native
--On-demand library sound quality (bitrate) is a mystery. Reasonably clean, no real complaints.
I venture to say it's at least 256k; who knows. No SQ/mobile options in settings.
--No gapless playback.
--Artist "Radio" is par with competition. Nothing to brag about. No "smart", genre or continue play radio.
--When you fire up the app, it auto-plays where you left off. ...
--I've yet to add/match a song from a live station to the library/playlist. so for now that's a big half beta-baked claim.

To be fair, I realize that matching any given song is solely dependent on their virgin licensed catalog and proves to be a thorny coding task in turbulent uncharted water. Clearly they need to deliver an API to stations to push the meta data. Hopefully they'll get this sorted. But right now, their touted "Holy Grail" feature has proven to be a Big Hat No Cattle puffy bust for me.
Time and version updates will tell.

Again, I enthusiastically applaud the concept and look forward to further development/refinement.

Please TuneIn....get your checkbook out and take their fantastic notion and run with it.

 

[satkinsn]

Like everyone else, I have a genetic hatred for what CC did to radio. But you're right +48, the iHeart bid is...interesting. I have the basic app on my Sonos system and haven't tried the paid tiers yet, but found a potential use for it last night - the missus and I made a one day round trip to Brooklyn and were headed home, just north of Syracuse, when I punched up the AM dial. I wanted to listen a bit to WHEN, which back in the day was a news powerhouse in the Syracuse market but has long since been borged into the CC cluster, and is now an AM R & B station.

Anyway, it was a little after 6 on a Saturday night and they were playing a Spanish language pop show and I heard some wonderful, unexpected music. I would have loved to have been able to figure out the song(s) so I could listen later, presumably in better quality.

s.

 

[satkinsn]

+48 wrote:

"That all changed for me at the dawn of internet simulcasts of far away towers and independent listener supported internet radio stations. 17 years ago, radio was reborn for me and while it takes some effort to search & filter, it's not all that difficult to find some tremendously sweet veins of gold. Bleak as one might think, there’s still a good bit of great OTA and internet only radio at our fingertips. Algorithms have come far but nothing beats a well schooled and seasoned DJ. I’ve been listening faithfully to a select few real radio gems for many years. An enormous pool of curation."

This. One thing that's changed for me: albums were always my default container for music, whether in LP, cassette, CD or digital form. Increasingly, I listen to radio and radio-like services and get at least half of my enjoyment there - whether that's an online stream of an OTA station, something the tuner is pulling in or a service like ClassicalRadio or Slacker or Pandora.

s.