App: TuneIn Radio Pro - Live Radio v20.7.1
Developer: TuneIn Inc.
Category: Music & Audio
Price: $9.99
IAP: $7.99/month subscription (see update below)
TuneIn Radio Pro is a stylish, full featured Internet radio player which boasts over 100,000 streams within a multitude of categories to choose from with no hardware tuner required. Whether your tastes vary from sports, news, talk or music, TuneIn Radio Pro delivers content from any Internet connection available straight to your devices. There are vast selections of genres available for the different organized categories, which will suit any mood or occasion that you see fit. What sets TuneIn Radio Pro apart from other Internet radio players is that it's an integrated audio solution with social networking, stream recording, sleep timer and alarm clock functionality; all making it a multi-purpose application. Creating a free account will enable you to store your catalog of chosen stations on the cloud to easily migrate your streams to other devices. With the multitude of international streams available, it's just as fun to discover new cultural media as it is to quickly turn on your favorite stations with a simple press. I'm delighted for countless hours listening to streams from around the world to keep informed and learning what interests those in distant countries, just by swiping down the list out of sheer curiosity.
Those who really like the clean, stylish look of Android Lollipop will certainly appreciate the Material inclusions of TuneIn Radio Pro; oddly, a mixture of both light and dark. The main navigational menus are Material Light as the station and option pages are Material Dark with no way to customize or change either theme. This would be my only complaint as it offers no way to change between day and night modes. For a mobile device to play media wherever you go, I find this to be a gross oversight that needs to be addressed in the future. However, the sleek interface is modernized with a bevy of convenient pages which add to overall experience including; recents, trending, location, language, local radio and many more ways to choose your media. Once a stream is selected, the interface switches to Material Dark with the landing page of the station with relative information of what you are listening to. From here, there are several optional pages which can be accessed with either swipes or presses to enhance your experience and it's all executed quite well. You will find a sleep timer which will play your stream between increments of 15 to 120 minutes, then turn off to enter that deep slumber. There is also an alarm clock feature which will turn on TuneIn Radio Pro to play your stream for a selectable wide range of time, which is a fantastic way to wake up versus an annoying audio clip. Recordings of streams can be started manually or can be scheduled for selected periods of time, as well. A car mode is also included to bring up a panel of larger function buttons to be more friendly and safe while driving, which is commendable and appreciated these days.
On my home WiFi connection, the streams seldomly studder or stop and seem very consistent with no distractions or buffering as it plays. Depending on the station you select, there will usually be options available for the quality of the stream so that you can use it through your phone's 3G or 4G connection; an attempt to be data counter friendly. The minimum stream quality varies, but I have found 128kbs to be the maximum on any station, so audiophiles might be disappointed to see this kind of a limitation. Other apps such as Radio Tunes offer up to 256kbs quality for their streams, but requires an expensive subscription package to maintain; whereas TuneIn Radio Pro runs for the base cost of the app. The price point is a bit steep at $9.99, but with the wealth of features and options available, it's definitely a suite of functionality in a single package. The updates are relatively frequent as the developer is quite active in fixing bugs and adding minor features occasionally, which gives you an idea of the level of support. Overall, I find TuneIn Radio Pro to be a highly functional app with inherent thoughtful features which aid in our daily lives to make things more pleasurable and convenient. I highly recommend it for those who crave variety and selection in a stylized form with the added features thrown in for good measure, which gives it fairly good value for the asking cost of the application.
Update (October 3rd, 2015): A few versions ago, TuneIn Inc. decided to implement an expensive premium mode subscription method within TuneIn that is only available in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. This new premium mode disables all commercials in the aforementioned countries, allows live streaming of Major League Baseball and Basketball events, as well as offers over 40,000 audiobooks available on-demand to your devices. As lucrative as this would appear, TuneIn Inc. has also now increased the frequency of commercials playing through all channels in the non-premium version to motivate residents in those countries to pay $7.99 per month to disable these ads that are now tripled from previous versions. Other countries remain with the methods prior to this change and are unaffected. However, paying an additional $95.88 per year seems like extortion as the new streamed content greatly resembles a virtual audible ad server and kills the experience that was enjoyed in the past. I am extremely disappointed in the newly employed marketing methods adapted recently, but even more so with the altered content that is now delivered in these three countries. If you live in the three mentioned countries and don't mind parting with $95.88 per year to receive content that is reasonably tolerable, then TuneIn is still a great program. However, for the first time ever, I am giving TuneIn a dual rating depending on where you live. And a note to developers; this is exactly what you don't do to your customers.
Update II (December 8th, 2015): The thoughtful developers over at TuneIn Inc. have decided to include notifications, as often as twice per day, for the three "Premium regions" that cannot be toggled off in options. Not only did they decide to bombard these particular users with 400% more audio commercials, they decided to spam these notifications of "Premium" events such as Major League Baseball that can only be heard by paying an additional $7.99 monthly fee. This app keeps getting worse for the "The Three Cursed Regions" as time goes on. The next thing you know, TuneIn Inc. will start charging for the color in the interface. I've never been so disgusted with a legitimate developer as I now am with TuneIn Inc.; I look forward to dropping this rating to two stars with the next marketing idea they devise.
Pros:
- Stylish Internet radio with 100,000 stations.
- Records and stores Internet radio streams.
- Convenient sleep timer and alarm functions.
- Robust social networking sharing capabilities.
Cons:
- No interface options to change Material Light and Dark theme.
- Some buffering with dropouts can occur depending on certain factors.
- New expensive subscription rates introduced for U.S., U.K. and Canada.
Reviewer rating:
Reviewer rating: (U.S., U.K. & Canada)
Device/OS used: Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 2012 / KitKat v4.4.4, Lollipop v5.1.1
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Mobilism: TuneIn Radio Pro - Live Radio v20.7.1 [Paid]