The rollout of a Samsung smartphone with NextRadio caused a “marked jump in downloads” of the FM tuning app last weekend, according to NextRadio.
On Friday Sprint released the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, calling this “the first true NextRadio smartphone launch” given that the HTC One and EVO 4G LTE announced earlier had been in the marketplace before the app was released. “There were twice as many device activations in the week following the Note 3’s launch than the week prior,” NextRadio reports in a blog post.
NextRadio, part of Emmis Operating Co., reports that the app has been downloaded 40,000 times and is being retained at an 84% rate. Listeners have tuned to some 4,000 FM stations and listened for 12,000 hours. The app is available on three Sprint smartphone models. The company says more devices will be launched in the coming weeks.
“There’s always a tempered excitement around these metrics, knowing there are so many external forces affecting them,” states a blog post, but it said the app benefited from “positive press from our Radio Show session” as well as a recent event held by the organization New York Market Radio, or NYMRAD.
The blog cites comments from Sprint’s VP of Product Development David Owens saying that “tens of millions” of Sprint smartphones eventually will be preloaded with the app. NextRadio wrote approvingly of Sprint’s marketing, calling the company “a tremendous partner” and saying the wireless carrier has quadrupled its radio ad spend this year over last, displaying “a significant amount of confidence in the project and the radio industry as a whole to deliver the content.”
It urged stations to get the word out. “In the next month, we’re looking at another handful of FM radio-enabled device launches with the NextRadio app. If we see the same exponential growth in downloads from each of those new FM smartphones, we’ll have a more vested foundation for audience activation.”
“A Mid-October Status Report” (NextRadio blog post)
