TuneIn launches Premium service, soon for Australia

TuneIn, the app which provides free access to radio stations and podcasts online, this week unveiled a subscription option with extras.

At this stage, it is only available in the US, Canada and the UK, but an international roll-out is expected shortly.

Hopefully the premium offer won’t take too long to be accessed by Australians. For starters, it removes the audio ads from initially 600 of the 100,000 radio stations it broadcasts. For overseas users, a monthly US$8 (or equivalent) subscription also provides audio streams of Major League Baseball, Premier League soccer and German Bundesliga games; 40,000 audiobooks including the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series; and 16 different language-learning programs.

TuneIn CEO John Donham said: “With the introduction of TuneIn Premium we are taking the world’s best audio content and putting it all in one place. In today’s crowded audio landscape, our focus on exclusive news, talk, sports, and music allows us to deliver an unparalleled listening experience to our users”.

The move seems perfect timing. The internet might be cooler, but radio remains a much loved medium. 243 million Americans aged over 12 listen to radio each week, 66.6 million of them Millennials. According to Nielsen, radio reaches 93% of Americans a week, compared with smartphones' reach of 70%.

Australia’s love affair with radio is also rising. According to Commercial Radio Australia, it grew 8% in the five years to 2013 to 9.7 million. GfK’s recent AudienScope report found that 19% of people are listening more than they were a year ago.

2015 is the year where younger listeners learned to fall in love with radio again, with customised playlists offered by Apple’s Beats 1, Rdio, Spotify and Pandora. TuneIn’s Premium essentially gives them all that’s great about traditional radio but removes what they would consider the most irritating – the ads.

Donham said, "Apple hasn't invented radio, but they have identified what was special about it to so many people. There's something compelling that happens when somebody is talking to you, it moves from an on-demand experience to a social one."

TuneIn has 60 million global active users every month, while iHeart Radio has 87 million. In Australia, TuneIn has a wider grab of local commercial and community stations than iHeart Radio which is confined to those on the Australian Radio Network.