By Adam Turner
Combining Australia's commercial stations and national broadcasters in the one slick app, RadioApp makes it easy to listen to live radio when you're on the move.
While commercial radio has less of a PR problem than free-to-air television, Australia's radio broadcasters are also fighting against the internet for the hearts and minds of Australian audiences. Just like Freeview, Commercial Radio Australia has developed a free cross-network app for iOS and Android which puts live stations at your fingertips for those times when you can't access the terrestrial broadcasts.
RadioApp puts your favourite Australian commercial and national radio shows in your pocket.
The app supports 250 stations from across the country, with no attempt to block you from listening to stations from other areas. You'll find pretty much all the commercial stations from each region, along with the ABC and SBS stations, plus a range of digital-only DAB+ stations such as Buddha and Koffee. You can search by name, city or frequency.
Unfortunately the app overlooks community radio, which is understandable considering it's backed by Commercial Radio Australia but still frustrating. Many of the community stations offer online simulcasts and you can access the likes of Triple R, PBS, Joy FM and Light FM through competing apps like TuneIn (which also offers all the stations covered by RadioApp).
The RadioApp lets you save your favourites, listen to live broadcasts and see what's played recently.
Each station on RadioApp runs on a 30 to 60-second delay – which is the nature of online simulcasting rather than a deliberate move by the broadcasters. It's enough of a lag that you can't listen to the radio while watching live sport as the radio commentators are too far behind the play. Streaming sports rights deals mean that the online simulcasts will likely blackout some events, such as live AFL matches and the cricket.
The RadioApp app says to allow 28.8 MB per hour when streaming, which works out at 66 kbps, but the bit-rate varies between stations. That might not seem impressive compared to the high bit rates of the subscription music services – if you're fussy you can hear the difference – but chances are you're listening to live radio more for the talking than the music. The sound quality is actually pretty good, helped by the fact that you don't need to worry about the static, interference and tuning issues inherent to listening to AM or FM radio.
The app makes it easy to search for channels, save your favourites and flick through them. Some stations display details of the current song including album art but, like terrestrial broadcasts, these details tend to lag more than a minute behind. More useful is that you can see the details of the last few songs played, share them online and sometimes even click through to an online music store to buy the track. The app is also expected to support podcasts further down the track.
The interface features a large play/pause button but that's a bit misleading because it doesn't actually pause and buffer streams. When you press play again it doesn't pick up where it left off, instead it jumps to live, but that might be addressed in a future update. If you are chasing these kinds of features then once again you should look to TuneIn, which lets you pause, rewind and even record streams.
While it might be missing a few advanced features, RadioApp is an impressive first effort which is easy to use when it's time to go old-school and listen to the airwaves.