What’s one way to draw iPhone users to Android? Offer a similar selection of apps. Android has done that exceedingly well, convincing developers to create Android versions of popular iOS apps — and furthermore, offering them for free (against ad sales) through Google Play. Today we’re seeing something along those lines. TuneIn Radio is already available on Android, but one of its iPad-only features, Live, has made its way to the No. 1 smartphone platform.
For those unfamiliar, TuneIn radio aggregates tens of thousands of radio stations worldwide, alongside podcasts, concerts, and other audio media. You can choose from among your favorite stations, even if the station is across the country — or across the world. You can set your favorites, so you never lose the stations that bring you the music you want to hear.
The Live feature provides a different way to discover stations and music you might love. When you set it up, you choose up to seven categories you enjoy, whether news, sports talk, or a variety of music genres. When you click the Live tab on the app, you’re brought to a screen with a series of squares that contain album artwork. What you see is what’s playing on a particular station. Your choices are broken down into genre, so you can scroll sideways to check out different options.
Perhaps the greatest feature is the “just started” one, which lets you know when you can jump in right at the beginning of a song. The tiles for each genre automatically scroll, but newly streaming songs get priority.
The feature isn’t exactly revolutionary, but it does present users with a new way to discover music they like. It also stands to help users discover stations that play music they enjoy, and perhaps helps them discover music that is new to them. How many times have you browsed in a record shop and found yourself intrigued by an album cover? Chances are you wouldn’t drop $15 on a CD just because you liked the cover, but TuneIn gives you the opportunity to sample it before buying.
The normal downsides of TuneIn apply to Live as well. You’ll still have to sit through an ad before you get to your music, so even if you catch a song at the beginning you’ll miss at least the intro. You also have to change the settings to 192Kbps streaming to get a decent sound quality; streaming music isn’t too hard on your data plan, so you should be fine even with a 2GB cap as long as you’re not combining TuneIn with extensive video streaming.
When TuneIn conceived Live, it was a great feature that iPad and web customers could enjoy. Taking it to Android opens up a whole new mode of music discovery to a huge audience. You can get TuneIn Radio with the Live update for free at Google Play.
Via Phone Scoop.
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