An App-tastic Year Ahead

There’s good news in store for Public Radio Player fans! We’re excited to announce renewed CPB funding for the project that will result in two major updates to the Public Radio Player during 2010. The first, version 2.1, will be released in the coming weeks, with a second update planned for the summer.

[Flying White / cc / Flickr]

As you may know, the Public Radio Player iPhone app originated from a CPB-funded collaboration of APM, NPR, PRI, and PI, led by PRX. That first grant ended in the summer of 2009 following the release of version 2.0. PRX is once again 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.

For version 2.1, the PRX development team has rewritten the code from scratch to improve performance and introduce some great new features to the Player (we’ll be showcasing some of these in the days ahead). We’re currently adding the finishing touches to v 2.1 and will let you know as soon as it goes live in the iTunes App Store.

We’ve also been updating some stats for the Public Radio Player. The app now provides public radio fans 463 station streams and nearly 1,000 on-demand programs, with more added all the time. Since launching in the fall of 2008, the Player has logged a cumulative total of over 2.5 million downloads! Now, with the renewed funding for the project, we’re looking forward to making 2010 a great year for the Public Radio Player and all its fans.