RadioApp � an industry-wide streaming radio app owned by the Australian radio industry � has celebrated its first year of availability.
RadioApp offers most Australian commercial and public radio stations, in a simple interface and a location-aware search engine. It is available for iOS and Android, and was launched last year by Commercial Radio Australia. It was built by All In Media, an Xperi company.
One year on, speaking at the CRA�s Radio Alive conference in Melbourne VIC, Chris Johnson from Southern Cross Austereo disclosed some usage figures.
The product has had more than 200,000 downloads (the adult population of Australia is 20 million) and is now delivering over 1.8 million monthly stream-starts. It is responsible for more than 25 million monthly listening minutes.
RadioApp has functionality to connect to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
Johnson shared a graph showing an increase in CarPlay use. �It is growing faster than main app usage,� he added.
Johnson also discussed how listeners with RadioApp use it to switch station.�
Users of �line out� or �airplay�, two methods of getting audio from a phone to a speaker, are 30% less likely to switch stations than listeners on headphones.
Users of Apple Carplay, however, switch station 40% more often than those with headphones, according to the statistics, which examined total unique stream starts per iOS device.
The steering board for the project includes representatives from major commercial broadcasters and public radio. The publicly-funded Australian ABC has a market share of around 20%.
Earlier in the day, Joan Warner, CEO of Commercial Radio Australia, told the conference that less than 10% of radio listening in Australia is over the internet.
Warner announced that 3.6m people (26.3% of the adult population) listen to DAB+ every week; 1.8m more listeners than use the internet. It was also announced that 42% of new cars sold in Australia were fitted with DAB+; the broadcast digital radio technology is fitted in 41 vehicle brands.
The announcements were made in a digital radio track at the conference which was attended by major auto manufacturers. A separate, closed, session was held for radio station management.
