Everyone in radio is trying to figure out the streaming world, but one company’s strategy makes no sense to me, and that is Townsquare. Townsquare is one of the largest radio companies in the country, yet its streaming strategy feels to me like a company stuck in some earlier era of internet radio. Why do I say this? Let’s examine what they’re doing compared to other major companies, and even some smaller players.
About 15 years ago when Townsquare first burst onto the scene after being formed out of the ashes of Regent and being combined with sister companies Gap Central and Gap West, they began developing their own app, Radio Pup. This was launched in Spring 2011, and I had it on my phone within six months of getting my first smartphone that December. Back then, I was quite annoyed that Tunein, which I always thought of as the one stop shop for all U.S. stations, could not provide me with access to iHeart, CBS, and Townsquare stations, with a few strange exceptions on the Townsquare side. Even so, those restrictions made at least some level of sense, as iHeart itself owns over 800 stations, CBS had somewhere between 60 and 150 at the time, and Townsquare had around 130. Those numbers have changed quite a bit in the years since, but with the exception of CBS now being out of the business and Entercom now Audacy absorbing the majority of those stations, all of those companies and their related apps still exist, but Townsquare still remains the outlier.
While Radio Pup still exists, Townsquare quit promoting it on its stations in 2018, in favor of promoting individual station apps. At the time, this made sense to me, because other stations were still doing so, though promos were starting to shift to focusing on smart speakers. In years since though, I rarely hear stations promoting individual apps anymore. If a station is promoting listening on phones, it’s usually simply promoting using the station’s website. Now that Adobe Flash is gone, listening to a station through a phone’s web browser is much easier. In fact, you can listen to the airchecks on this site from your phone’s browser, and my last aircheck site worked the same way, as the technology I’m using is the same on both sites. Townsquare though continues to promote individual station apps. Additionally, both iHeart and Audacy have opened up their apps to other companies. I don’t have the list in front of me, but I did see a list of companies and what apps they were available on. There are multiple companies, though the only one that comes to mind at the moment is Alpha, that are available on all three. Even Cumulus and iHeart, once restricted to only the iHeart app, are now open to Tunein. Meanwhile, Townsquare continues to restrict access to their streams to only their mobile apps. I think the list I’m referring to does say that Townsquare stations are available on Tunein, but in experimenting with my friend a couple weeks ago, we found that that only applies to smart speakers. They still don’t even show up on the mobile app, and when pulling them up on the computer, you are redirected to a Tunein exclusive station.
To me, this makes no sense. Most people I know have multiple presets on their car radio. If I’m like most people, I would want all the stations I like in one place. This means one or two phone apps, not six or maybe more depending on how many stations you like or are available on your car’s dashboard. I can see only two examples of why people would download an individual station’s app. First, if you are a loyal listener of the station. I knew someone who was, and probably still is, a loyal listener of KINK. She had the app on her phone, and the radio in her car and her office were also set to 101.9. I don’t think I heard her listening to anything else. Next is the news station. I could see an argument for downloading a news station’s app which contains the live stream, but also the news headlines in a mobile-friendly format. In both cases though, I don’t see any reason to restrict a station to only one app. To me, that drives listeners away from streaming apps. If you’re an iHeart or Audacy, you can get away with having your stations on your own app because the users still have hundreds of other choices, but I don’t think the average listener is going to download each station’s app if they go back and forth between many stations.
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