Moving Internet Radio Forward

This week, I discovered the TuneFM Radio app for Android. It's good.

A requirement for me is that it supports open content. When you search, it pulls stations from https://www.radio-browser.info, something like a wikipedia of internet radio. Somewhat like how podcasts work. When you try to use the app to add a station, it directs you to add the station to that service. Awesome.

Overall, it just does everything the way you'd want. As a free app, it has ads but they are not that annoying and they turn off for $1 per month. In addition to the search, the main screen is called "Recent" and it just lists the stations you have recently played. When you click on a station, it shows the artwork of the station or more likely the currently playing song, with a few details. The background color here tries to match the art. And there's another screen called "Songs" that keeps track of recently played songs. These basics work well.

There's a bunch that very slightly annoys me and what I think it could do better. Nothing that makes it not worth using but I should mention it somewhere. It's not open source. There's no widget. Favoriting a station doesn't seem to do anything. I'd lay out some of the text differently. The overall organization of the search could be better. I'd suggest taking cues from PocketCasts. Keeping track of songs is awesome but clicking on them links you to Spotify. It's a great idea if it could be made to work with indie music options, but they don't really exist yet. There's a built-in submission form for suggestions but otherwise, I can't find the developer.

But the bigger point I want to make here is that this app made me believe again in this format. I have always loved it but felt frustrated. Didn't feel like I could recommend it. Now I think that if people tried this app out, they would be regular internet radio listeners. It's the first time I felt able to say that.

And that matters because it breaks the control of terrestrial radio, where the investment to have your own station is much higher. Anybody could run an internet radio station themselves for a while, but now they can point people to an easy and nice way to tune in. Hopefully there's one like this on Apple.

But the even bigger goal now also seems possible. Growing indie music. Ultimately making the music industry work for musicians and listeners. I think that requires going beyond a shuffled playlist of new releases but also can't be controlled by corporate algos. It requires DJs who do the work of curation. Who help us connect with the music. And to do that without big money, it also requires creative commons music.

(eventually we need to get money to flow directly and automatically from listeners to musicians at a rate we can afford)

But this feels like a big step.