Love letters and advice

Posted: February 23rd, 2009 | Author: Josh from Public Radio Player | Filed under: Public Radio Tuner | 11 Comments »

Over the last couple of weeks, we have seen a huge increase in downloads of the Public Radio Tuner iPhone app. After being featured in the App Store, the Tuner surged up the charts, rising to #1 among music apps and peaking as the #2 free iPhone app overall! People are blogging about it, tweeting about it, and most importantly – using it to stream hundreds of public radio stations on their iPhones and iPods. With the large number of new users, we’re also seeing a lot of comments and reviews coming in.

In the iTunes store, user Roobieroo gave the Public Radio Tuner this review:

Wow, everything I wanted them to fix in the previous version has been addressed in this latest release. You can now search local stations using GPS, station call letters, or search by state. Once you find a station, you can just click on the star icon to make it a favorite… This is the application I’ve been wanting for so long and it’s finally here. Easily a five star application.

You can read over 1300 user reviews for the Public Radio Tuner at the iTunes App Store.

And JT left this comment on the website:

I live in a rural area and work in a building with a lot of RF interference from electronic equipment. So needless to say, I am going to use this app a lot. The only immediate suggestion would be a link to the station’s program guide to find out what you are listening to. Thanks for publishing what I consider one of the top 10 apps for the iPhone.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to provide us your feedback – and thanks for the kind words about the Public Radio Tuner. If you haven’t yet had the chance to give us a piece of your mind, leave your questions and comments on our Give Feedback page.

For those who have left comments about connection issues with station streams, lead developer Matt MacDonald left the following comment on the Give Feedback page:

A note to those who are encountering problems listening to streams – there are a number of factors and variables involved in getting the radio stream over the internet delivered to your phone and very few of them are within our control.

I’m also having problems listening to streams here in Harvard Square, but when I walk home the streams magically start working again. Some things to consider; AT&T network reliability, internet stream availability and saturation.

My check to see if it’s Public Radio Tuner or the network that is having issues is to open another streaming radio app and see if they are also having problems. Most of the times if I can’t use Public Radio Tuner then Pandora or Wunder Radio also aren’t working.

Keep the comments coming – user feedback is a vital part of this project. We are in the midst of finalizing the scope of version 2.0, and many user suggestions for new functionality will be included. I’ll be giving you a peek behind the development curtain later this week.

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11 Comments on “Love letters and advice”

  1. Brandon said at 10:46 am on June 25th, 2009:

    Please add 103.5 and 96.3 fm

    The app is great

  2. Orgazznic said at 4:33 pm on May 10th, 2009:

    Please try to add WOZI — presque isle, ME. (96.1 FM)

  3. SDC said at 3:08 am on April 23rd, 2009:

    Great app!
    My suggestions echo those of previous posts: background play while working in other apps & on/off timers. Maybe you should also consider a button (or page) that allows users to donate to their favorite channel!

  4. Josh from Public Radio Tuner said at 10:22 am on March 10th, 2009:

    Bill – at this stage, the Public Radio Tuner is a first collaborative attempt among the public radio industry to create a mobile app. We chose to concentrate our efforts on one platform, the iPhone, so we could get it right and use our resources wisely. After we release version 2.0, we will evaluate how the Public Radio Tuner could be made available to more mobile platforms. You can read more about the options for a device independent Public Radio Tuner.

  5. Bill Cook said at 6:45 pm on March 9th, 2009:

    So National Public Radio is working for Apple now?

    Nothing public About this at all, I wonder what laws are being violated by not providing equal access to all wireless devices?

    Public would be open source and open access not the Apple Itunes store and advertisements.

  6. Marc said at 10:10 am on March 7th, 2009:

    Contrary to lead developer Matt’s comments, Slacker radio will stream all day long from my location but PRT stops after 10 to 30 seconds. I’m a public radio junkie so I’d love to see this app work! If nothing else how about automatically restarting the app if the stream stops (which works manually)?

  7. Mizzadventure said at 5:58 am on March 4th, 2009:

    Is it possible to show the stream address for the different stations so we can plug it into radio alarm apps? Or, modify/upgrade the tuner with clock alarm function, or link it to Iphone’s clock alarm. Great app either way! I can take my favorite public radio station with me wherever I travel!

  8. Holly Monroe said at 7:21 pm on February 27th, 2009:

    I particularly like talk radio. I would like a search feature to search by the name of the person or subject that will lead me to the station. For example: Handle on the Law by Bill Handle plays out of California but I don’t know which station to hear him.

  9. Alms said at 1:50 am on February 27th, 2009:

    This app is a dream!! I do have one suggestion though: could the radio to keep playing when you’re doing other things on your iPod? Like how when you’re listening to your music library and go into mail, e.g., and the music keeps playing. That would make the (already amazing ) app even better! Thanks

  10. Morgan brickhem said at 10:32 pm on February 25th, 2009:

    Need to add please 95.5 or 97.9

  11. Davy said at 1:37 am on February 24th, 2009:

    needs a sleep timer feature

    Thx for a good app!