The BBC has soft launched BBC Sounds, a new audio app intended to replace the BBC iPlayer Radio. BBC Sounds brings together BBC live and on-demand radio, music and podcasts into a single personalised app which is available in iOS and Android versions.
BBC Sounds is designed to learn from the user’s listening habits, providing one-tap access to the latest episodes of favourite BBC podcasts and radio shows and making available an 80,000 hour library for audio discovery.
BBC Sounds Features
- ‘Scroll the dial’ to listen live to any of the BBC’s 18 national stations (and online-only station CBeebies Radio) or tap All Stations to listen to any of the BBC’s 40 local stations – see screenshot above.
- Pick up where you left off with ‘Continue Listening’ for part-listened podcasts and radio shows and flags next episodes
- Curated collections of podcasts and on demand music shows to match your mood, from Funny Chat to Upgrade Your Life, from Live Sessions to Dance Mixes
- Discover new audio via a ‘Recommended for you’ section which is constantly refreshed based on your listening
- Browse by category: from Crime to Science & Technology, from Classical to Hip Hop
- Add any individual episode or clip to ‘My List’ to listen to later
- Subscribe to any podcast or programme and get a personalised feed of the latest episodes in ‘My Sounds’
Dan Taylor-Watt, Head, BBC iPlayer & BBC Sounds blogged: ‘This is very much a first release – we wanted to get it out as early as possible to start getting feedback to help develop the app. There’s a bunch of additional features we’re already busy working on (including downloads, to enable offline listening), and we’ll have lots more to add later in the year, but we’d love to hear how you’d like to see the app develop.’
Users are encouraged to leave their comments via this survey.
Several iPlayer Radio features – Radio Schedules, Live Rewind, or Playlists – are missing from BBC Sounds as well as downloads to enable offline listening. User comments on the BBC Blog have highlighted missing volume controls, device compatibility issues, and even missing ‘Saved’ tracks pointing to the app’s early version status.
The Future of BBC Radio
Recent announcements from the BBC have shown that it sees streaming as a threat to radio. Bob Shennan, BBC Director of Music stated that BBC Radio faces a new threat – streaming services. Just as BBC Television has to compete against Netflix and Amazon to keep viewers, its radio counterpart could go the way of the dodo thanks to Spotify and Apple Music.
Speaking at the Radio Festival, Shennan said, ‘The new competitive set is global. Streaming services are the new best friend to music. They have transformed the financial fortunes of a sector that was on its knees. But they have set their sights on radio.’
Another BBC exec, James Purnell, Director of Radio & Education, in a speech last week to the EBU’s Truth and Power Conference on 19th June 2018 outlined how he saw the BBC becoming a more open platform and how it had opened up its iPlayer technology to other organisations.
‘The iPlayer hosts content from organisations like S4C and the RSC. We’ve shared our live streaming technology with the Manchester International Festival, or sports bodies like British Swimming and British Basketball. BBC Ideas will this week show its first set of content from an external partner – six videos from the Open University. And every one of our new podcasts will be contested, helping to grow the independent podcasting sector.’
Whether other streamers and organisations will end up partnering with the BBC or using its technology platform remains to be seen as past attempts have met with both competition and regulatory issues and the not inconsiderable difficulties of working with such a large and bureaucratic organisation.
