iOS4 and the Public Radio Player

It’s a big week for iPhone fans. The first shipments of the iPhone 4 may be reaching customers today and yesterday Apple released the new iOS4 operating system, which can be installed on recent model iPhones and iPod Touches.

As we gushed in a previous post, the new iOS4 operating system is a big deal for audio-centric apps like the Public Radio Player because of the new multitasking feature. Developers are able to reprogram their apps for iOS4 to enable multitasking, allowing those apps to run in the background while you access your email, surf the web, or use other apps.

Multitasking is not yet available for the Public Radio Player, but we are excited to make it happen and it will definitely be included in an upcoming release. Introducing multitasking to the Player requires development resources that are in scarce supply right now. As you know, we are currently working to bring the Player to the Android platform as well as developing a web-based version of the app. Making multitasking a part of the Public Radio Player is a priority for us, but it will be delayed while we juggle our other projects.

Additionally, we have been hearing scattered reports that the current version of the Player is crashing after updating to iOS4. We are looking into this and will remedy the situation as soon as possible.

Challenging Apple’s No Donation Policy

Last month, we outlined plans to enable listeners to donate to their favorite stations from within the Public Radio Player. As we explained, Apple currently prohibits apps to use the iTunes payment system to process donations. Jake Shapiro, Executive Director of Public Radio Exchange, takes on Apple’s donation ban in a guest post today on the tech blog Ars Technica. Read the full article.

Public Radio and the Mobile Web

A sampling of some public radio mobile websites.

It wasn’t long ago that a “mobile website” meant a bare-bones, text-only browsing experience. Today, the mobile web is quite a different place, and many mobile sites are packed with rich multimedia features. Public radio organizations are among those making a splash on the mobile web.

The Public Radio Player is what you call a native app — it’s a piece of software designed specifically for the iPhone. (Android version coming soon!)  In contrast, a mobile site is quite simply a website formatted for viewing on a smartphone and can be accessed by any web-enabled phone.

While the universal access of a mobile website is attractive, developing native apps has advantages. Native apps can, for example, harness all the fancy features of a smartphone — the camera, GPS, and the accelerometer, just to name a few. To accommodate the greatest number of streaming audio formats, the Public Radio Player remains better off as a native app. But the mobile web is evolving rapidly and the line between native apps and mobile websites is beginning to blur.

NPR launched their first mobile site in 2007 and has continually upgraded the site (found at m.npr.org) as mobile web standards have improved. The site provides access to the all NPR news stories, and audio from hourly newscasts and a number of NPR produced programs. NPR also provides stations the ability to import local news feeds and audio to create a local presence within the NPR mobile site.

A handful of local stations have established their own mobile sites. Three great examples are WBUR in Boston (the site recognizes mobile browsers at wbur.org), KPBS in San Diego (mobile.kpbs.org), and Minnesota Public Radio (m.mpr.org). These sites focus on providing local and national headlines, and links to on-air schedules and programs. The KPBS and WBUR mobile sites allow you to stream live audio as well (and you can close Safari and the audio plays on while you access other apps!). Hop on your phone and check out these impressive examples of public radio on the mobile web.

Listener Support & the Public Radio Player

In a previous blog post, we talked about how the introduction of ads to the Public Radio Player can help fund app maintenance and development well beyond the current CPB grant. But we aren’t stopping there – it’s time to channel the goodwill of the app’s vast audience to the stations themselves. Clearly, there would be no Player without them.

The big hurdle is that Apple currently prohibits donations to be made using the iTunes payment system. We have been discussing a wide range of alternatives, and in evaluating our options we’ve outlined some guiding principles:

• Donations should be easy to make from a smartphone.
• Keep service fees low. Credit card processing or other payment services should not exceed 5% of revenue from donations.
• Donations made from the Public Radio Player should not be disruptive to stations’ existing membership programs.
• Transactions should be directly between the listener and the station. PRX should not have to serve as a middleman and distribute donation dollars to stations.

Most stations accept online donations on their websites, and we could simply link to these secure pledge pages from within the Player. But these donation forms require the entry of personal and credit card information over multiple fields and pages. This is cumbersome on a small touch-screen device — even the well-intentioned among you might not find the patience for this.

We quickly eliminated the possibility of charging for the app. Public radio has traditionally been free to access and we want to keep it that way on the Player. Plus, Apple takes 30% of all app sales, which is an excessive rate for non-profit fundraising efforts.

We took a good look at the possibility of SMS giving. The amazing sums of money raised for earthquake relief efforts in Haiti thrust mobile giving into the spotlight. But there are downsides: donations are capped at $10 by phone carriers (the average pledge drive donation to public radio is around $90). It would be difficult to create direct transactions between donors and stations within the current SMS giving infrastructure. Aside from the occasional big success, many organizations who have tried SMS giving have not yet found it to be worth the expense and effort.

More promising is to integrate an existing online payment system. Popular services like Paypal, Google Checkout and Amazon Payments are all developing mobile payment platforms that could be used to process donations. Assuming you (and your station) have an account with one of these services, you could donate by simply entering your username and password. And if each station has their own receiving account, the donation would be a direct transaction from listener to station. These mobile payment services are still evolving and we plan to keep a close eye on them for future releases.

In consultation with our Station Advisory Group, we’ve found that the most effective solution for now is one of the simplest: provide links within the app to contact a station by email or voice call to initiate the pledge process. The transaction can take place either over the phone or online at a later time. This approach demands the least amount of adjustment to how contributions are received at stations. PRX will soon release a tool for stations to provide the appropriate phone numbers and email addresses.

We’d like to hear from you. What kind of public radio donation system would you feel comfortable with on the Public Radio Player? Let us know in the comments.

Android App Development Underway!

We are excited to announce that work has started on an Android version of the Public Radio Player. The Player has been accepted to participate in the Google Summer of Code which will kick start the process of rebuilding the app for the Android platform. The Summer of Code is a global program that pairs student developers with open source software projects like ours. We have been paired with Mahesh Sharma, a student from India. Mahesh is already busy familiarizing himself with the existing app and is organizing requirements for the Android version. (We’ll introduce you to Mahesh more formally in an upcoming post.) He will be working closely with Matt MacDonald, Technical Projects Director here at Public Radio Exchange. At this stage, we have no target release date for the Android version of the Public Radio Player, but we’ll keep you posted as the work progresses.

Introducing the Public Radio Player to other mobile platforms has long been a goal of this project. But we naturally had to wait until the timing was right and the resources were available. While the iPhone remains the most popular smartphone device, the Android platform is growing fast and has reached the point where we could no longer ‘wait and see’. (And a special shout-out to all the Android-toting public radio fans who gently reminded us about the demand for an Android app.)  It’s clear that the development efforts on the Android version will greatly increase the reach of the Public Radio Player and make mobile streaming of public radio available to millions of new users.

Advertising and the Player

A sample ad on the app

The latest version of the Public Radio Player will introduce advertising within the app for the first time. We wanted to take a moment and provide you some details about the ads and where the money will go.

First of all, we believe that the Player should remain a free download. But, like public radio itself, an app needs funds to continue to operate. The Public Radio Player project has had two rounds of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Grant funding has been a great catalyst for this project, but it can’t sustain the app over the longer term. So CPB has explicitly asked us to explore ways to make the app financially self-sustaining.

To that end, national ads will soon appear on the top-level pages of the Public Radio Player. Any revenue from those ads will support further development and maintenance of the app. Like the underwriting credits you hear during a radio program, our goal is to display ads in manner that does not interfere with your enjoyment of the content. Ads on the Public Radio Player will appear as small horizontal banners near the bottom of the page and will disappear after 4 or 5 seconds. At the top of this post, you can see what these ads will look like.

A sample ad on WBUR’s page

In addition, we will be rolling out a service for local stations who want to sell ads to appear on their own pages in the Player. Revenue raised by ads on station pages will directly support that local station. We’re currently beta testing local ads with WBUR in Boston. (On a related note, PRX is also working with WBUR to build an iPhone app for the station. WBUR is seeking input and ideas for the app from its audience during the planning stages.)

We are also exploring ways to enable users to donate to stations directly through the app. However, this is a complex issue due to Apple’s restrictive policies on donations and stations’ own local systems for processing donations from listeners.

The popularity of the Public Radio Player (and other public radio apps) shows that mobile platforms present a significant growth opportunity for public media. It will be necessary to experiment and identify appropriate revenue models to support mobile efforts and keep all the live streams and on-demand programs available to users of mobile apps. We welcome your thoughts on the subject.

Today: We’re Part of Mobile Madness

Public Radio Exchange (PRX), which develops the Public Radio Player, will be part of the mobile technology festivities this afternoon at Xconomy’s Mobile Madness event in Cambridge, MA. Jake Shapiro, our executive director, gets a full minute to explain our iPhone development strategy to New England’s business and technology community. In that brief span of time, he’ll introduce the Player and our This American Life app, and talk about plans for future apps, including one for Boston station WBUR.

It’s a good thing he talks fast.

The event is sold out, but if you already got your tickets, come by the PRX table to say hello and maybe score a freebie.

New, Improved Public Radio Player

Below is the official press release for the Public Radio Player version 2.1

The Public Radio Player iPhone app: Nearly 500 live station streams. One thousand on-demand programs. Downloaded millions of times.

And now new funding, new features, new opportunities.

We’re excited to announce that CPB has renewed support for the next phase of the Public Radio Player. PRX is leading the project and continues to work with Public Interactive as a source of station schedule data and on-demand programs from the NPR API.

As you may know, the Public Radio Player came out of a CPB-funded collaboration of APM, NPR, PRI, and Public Interactive, led by PRX. That first grant ended last summer, but the Player lives on with thousands of new users downloading the app every day.

wake up with public radio!

Version 2.1 has just gone live in the iTunes Store, and we’re starting work on version 3.0 coming in June.

For version 2.1, we’ve rewritten the code from scratch to greatly improve performance. We’ve also added top-requested features – a sleep timer, wake-up alarm, and the ability to manage Favorites. We’ve improved the On Demand program player, and integrated Safari so users can browse station websites from within the app.

Version 2.1 will also include national banner ads on top-level pages, but not on station or program pages. CPB has encouraged us to find ways to sustain the project beyond grant support so this is our first foray into mobile advertising. We are working to make it possible for stations to sell local ads on their own Player pages. You can see a pilot of this on WBUR’s Player page now.

Version 3.0 will have additional enhancements and a broader roll-out of local station ad support. While we continue to investigate ways to support donations, membership, and pledging, this is a complex issue due to Apple’s no-donation policy as well as stations’ own systems. Local ads could be a significant revenue opportunity for stations with local underwriters interested in the mobile audience.

No iPhone or iPod Touch but full of curiosity? Watch this demo video of an earlier version.

Over the next few months, we will be reaching out to the public radio community for Player feedback and ideas.

There are several ways to stay up to date with the project and share questions and comments:

• Visit or subscribe to the project website at http://www.publicradioplayer.org for project updates, station stream submission and management, program schedule updates, an FAQ, promotional badges, and audio promos.
• Fan us on Facebook
• Email us with feedback and questions.

Best,

Jake Shapiro and the Public Radio Player team @ PRX

The Power of (our) Suggestions

On Monday, we published a chart listing the top 20 streams on the Public Radio Player. As mentioned in that post, we are just beginning to sort through the analytics on how public radio fans are using the iPhone app. We were excited about the data and wanted to share some of it right away. Without reading too much into the specifics, I made some initial inferences based on the results. Well, it turns out I missed one very important piece of the puzzle.

I opened the Public Radio Player yesterday and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The opening page of the app lists a group of featured live streams. That list is almost identical to the Top 20 rankings published on Monday. There is such a large overlap that one must conclude that the presence of a station on the featured list is a major influence on the usage of their stream. That is, the Public Radio Player app is both cause and effect of the top station rankings.

I’m not sure if we should categorize my mistake as a case of reflexivity, the observer effect, the Hawthorne effect, or simply a hall of mirrors. I think I had my nose too deep in spreadsheets of data to see what was right in front of me. I goofed – and I apologize for the error.

But the influence of the featured stations list is an important finding. We initially included a featured stations page as a way to improve the load time of the app and to provide a jumping off point for new users (a list of 400 stations and 1000 on-demand options can be a lot to digest). The role of the featured stations list on the streaming choices of users is larger than we expected. We are making some immediate changes to rotate more stations into the featured list and introduce public radio fans to a greater variety of live streams when opening the app. We will continue to monitor the top streams and watch how the featured list influences stream performance over time.

Again, apologies for the omission of these details in our last post.

Chart Topping Public Radio

Editor’s Note: Please read our update regarding the data in this post.

The stat we love to throw around is the big top line number: 2.5 million downloads for the Public Radio Player since its debut! Recently, we’ve been digging deeper into the details to learn more about how public radio fans are using the the Player.

We pulled data on the live station streams that are accessed most often by users – and were surprised by some of the results. Many of the popular streams on the Public Radio Player are from stations that don’t normally crack any top 20 lists for terrestrial broadcast audience.

I put together a quick comparison below. On the left are the top 20 stations on the Public Radio Player from October 1 – December 31 of 2009, as ranked by average monthly unique users. On the right are the top 20 terrestrial public radio stations as measured by average weekly cume (a measure of the total number of unique listeners) during the fall quarter, September 17 to December 9 (odd dates because broadcast Arbitron quarters correspond to specific weeks, not months). This data comes from a report published by the Radio Research Consortium.

Disclaimer: Because of differences in methodology, comparing online and broadcast audiences is often a case of apples and oranges. The lists below take two very different approaches to finding a similar type of number. Also, they are not an exact match on dates. Take it all with a grain of salt.
First thing to notice is the lack of overlap. By my count, there are only 5 stations among the top broadcast rankings that break the top 20 on the Public Radio Player. It’s great to see local stations that don’t normally enjoy huge broadcast audiences find success on the Public Radio Player.

Also, internet-only streams are making waves on the Player. KCRW Music, Folk Alley, Jazz 24, and Native Voice One are all examples of live streams with no broadcast presence anywhere on the radio dial.

Another takeaway — music stations perform well on the player. KCRW Music, KUT, Jazz 24, WXPN, WFMU, Folk Alley, KCMP, WWOZ, and WTMD all put an emphasis on music in a variety of formats. No surprise here as listening to music has long been a leading mobile activity (and a great way to beat the commuter blues).

Again, please don’t read too much into the charts. We’re just getting started understanding these stats. We’ll be watching the coming months to see if more definite trends and conclusions can be gleaned, and I will continue to highlight interesting finds here on the blog. If you’ve got some thoughts on what you see, please let us know in the comments. Thanks.