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The Best Mobile Application for Radio on the Market

Posted on: Mar 17, 2009 in Moble Audio

And I'm talking about the best application for your station – not necessarily the best one for other purposes, such as having a wide choice of listening alternatives.

It's called TuneKast and it's from a company called AirKast.  And if you thought a mobile application was one which simply streamed your station, wait until you get a load of this.

Watch my tour of the app below.

As I have long argued, a mobile environment is as different from "over the air" as a movie is different from a book.  You can instantly see how this app transforms the nature of the radio experience to match it to a novel environment, all the while adding audience engagement and monetization opportunities for you, the radio station.

For anybody who thought that streaming your station had to be monetized – and justified – strictly on the basis of the stream alone, think again.

More info on this app is available from TuneKast.  And it will soon be available for barter or next to nothing from the crew at Triton Media.

Sometimes, stuff just makes sense.
9 Comments;
  • http://profile.typepad.com/jschmidt1968 JEFF SCHMIDT

    It’s what HD radio should have been, and what radio station websites should be.

  • Bruce Goldsen

    Mark – I don’t see it under iPhone apps. How do you download it?

  • http://www.twitter.com/ricog Rico Garcia

    Yeah, I got a pretty detailed tour on this app a couple weeks ago. It is awesome!

  • http://tritonmedia.com Jim Kerr

    @Bruce,
    The beauty of this product is that it is driven via a web page. It isn’t an app you find in the app store. It is a web app, which–for those old school iPhone users keeping score–is how Steve Jobs wanted apps originally to be on the iPhone. You access Tunekast by bookmarking a web page. What could be simpler? Got five favorite stations? Bookmark them into a folder for easy access. Beautiful.
    Talk to any iPhone developer, and they’ll frustratingly tell you that there are too many app store native apps that would be better suited as web apps–powered by Javascript and websites. But too many decision-makers hear that “iPhone apps are where it’s at” and then have them made.
    For streaming audio, a web app is WAY better, and I’ll give you just one example: With Tunekast, you can listen to the audio stream while you are doing other things, from texting to checking email to checking Google maps. Try doing that with any of the audio streaming apps. They can’t do it because Apple won’t allow them to work in the background.
    Of course, other benefits are that it uses web standards, so Airkast should work with Google Android, Blackberry, and any other Smartphone with a decent browser out-of-the-box.
    Mark is not lying. This is absolutely the future of mobile streaming. Native apps simply cannot come close to providing this kind of functionality, and what I love about it is that the Airkast team did it by ignoring the (wrong-headed) rush to native apps and instead focused on solving the problem in the most effective and powerful way they could.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/mramsey1 Mark Ramsey

    It’s a web app, Bruce, not an iStore app.
    The downloadable app version is coming.

  • http://backstory.thenewscloud.com Scott Roberts

    Pandora is now available on the BlackBerry. Like TuneKast, you get it started up and then it will just pull in the background, while you go about your biz on the phone. Interface is pretty spiffy, too…a bit better, IMO than the Pandora web presentation.
    http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/03/18/pandora-for-blackberry-finally-launches/

  • http://profile.typepad.com/cpeterc Peter Clough

    One of the features that everyone seems to like about this is the ability to keep the stream going while while doing other things. The Flycast native app for iphone, Blackberry and Google Android phones has two features that allow this as well. First there is a bulit in web browser so you can click on ads or simply open the browser and do what you like online iwthout dropping the stream. In addition there is a Background mode – which esstentially turns Flycast back into a web app (That is how it was first launched) and then you can use any of the other applications on the iPhone e-mail, etc, without dropping the stream.
    Also, in case you didnt knwo that we had the Blackberry and Android apps available – you can try them now at http://www.flycast.fm
    Now you know!

  • http://www.manuelidades.com Manuel

    That’s a Quicktime streaming?

  • http://airkast.awdtesting.com/2009/03/17/hear-2-0-the-best-mobile-application-for-radio-on-the-market/ Hear 2.0: The Best Mobile Application for Radio on the Market « Air Kast

    [...] a mobile application was one which simply streamed your station, wait until you get a load of this. Read More… [...]

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MRM President Mark Ramsey has worked with innumerable television and radio broadcasters over his career, including all the biggest names, from Clear Channel, CBS, Bonneville, Sirius XM...

Mark Ramsey