BBC Radio Blog Feed

Launching the BBC iPlayer Radio mobile app on Android

2013-04-24T07:59:59+00:00

Key features of the BBC iPlayer Radio app

Today is an exciting day for me and my team as we are launching the BBC iPlayer Radio app for Android devices. It will bring all the same great features that are in the iOS version together with some further enhancements which utilise the specific navigational paradigms of the Android platform. Features include:

A touchscreen dial that beautifully shows the breadth of our radio, allowing easy access to all 57 BBC radio stations and their live streams.
An alarm clock to let you wake up to your favourite BBC Radio station.
Access to catch-up content, video and audio clips, podcasts, and for music shows, the details of the tracklist.
The ability to set programme alerts to tell you when specific favourite shows are on.
The option to favourite tracks and share them with friends via email and Twitter.

The app is available now in the Google Play store and via the Amazon app store. This app is also available on Android tablets (not just smartphones), including the very popular Amazon Kindle Fire HD. We are using the HLS audio format which is supported by Android version 3.0 and above. For a more detailed explanation of what devices will support the BBC iPlayer Radio app, see James Simcock’s post on the BBC Internet Blog.

We hope that android users will love the app as much as iOS users do. Since we launched BBC iPlayer Radio last October, the iOS app has been downloaded over 1.8 million times and we are seeing significant growth in usage on mobile and tablet. Let us know what you think of this release so that we can keep improving the service.

BBC iPlayer Radio app now links through to Radioplayer

2013-02-14T16:41:22+00:00

Recent listening figures from RAJAR suggest around 20% of the UK has listened to radio via a mobile phone. This figure nearly doubles to 37.6% for 15-24 year olds. It's not surprising then that the mobile apps that the BBC and Radioplayer both launched in late 2012 have proved very successful.

The BBC iPlayer Radio app on iOS (iPhone and iPod Touch) has been downloaded more than 1.4 million times since launch and, along with the Radioplayer app, it is being regularly used and driving up overall radio listening. The UK radio industry is all working hard to increase digital listening and mobile has a crucial role to play.

We're getting some great feedback on the design and functionality of the app and trying to make changes quickly to the issues you raise. Please keep your feedback coming to @BBCiPlayerRadio or via the app store.

One of the changes we've just made is to add a link from the BBC's iPlayer Radio app through to Radioplayer, helping audiences to more easily access hundreds of other stations from across UK Radio, including some community and student radio too. We hope this link helps BBC audiences to explore even more of the best of UK radio.

For more information on the iPlayer Radio mobile app, see James Simcock's recent post.

One million downloads of the BBC iPlayer Radio app

2012-12-13T10:28:19+00:00

After launching on 8 October, we've seen an amazing response to the iPlayer Radio app, reaching one million downloads in just two months. This coincides with this week’s update to the app which we’ve optimised for iPhone 5 devices, in response to audience feedback.

A million voices

With a million users, two months of anonymous stats data, hundreds of app store ratings and reviews, lots of feedback via twitter, via our blogs and via email, we're able to see some trends that, for me at least, are quite interesting, and are already helping to inform the roadmap for new features and improvements. I've broken out a few of those trends here.

What’s your flavour?

iPhones make up the vast majority of downloads, although there are number of iPod Touch and iPad users downloading too.

If you are an iPad user, you need to specifically choose ‘iPhone apps’ from the app store, as we do not currently have a version of the app built specifically for iPad.

What's the story, morning glory?

By far the most popular activity from the app so far, is 'waking up with Grimmy'. Whether it's by setting an alarm, or tuning in from home or en-route to work/school/wherever, from 7am each morning, there's a heavy bias to live listening to The Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw.

Interesting fact: 25% of active users listen live to Radio 1 in the app.

Radio 4’s Today Programme and Radio 2’s Chris Evans Breakfast Show are head-to-head for the position of second most popular morning programme.

Long train running

By the early evening, and especially during peak commuting hours (5.30-7.30pm) we see a much more diverse range of programmes being consumed via the app. Radio 1 live listening still dominates, but Radio 4, Radio 5 live and Radio 2 are also very popular. We see an increasing number of users digging deeper into the app, browsing most popular or most recent on-demand programmes or video clips for instance, or using the search function to find specific programmes. Comedy shows do particularly well at this time too. A little escapism as people escape from work perhaps?

Interesting fact: The most popular search in the app is for Comedy.
Interesting fact: The most popular on demand programme to date is Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue.

Night time is the right time (for on-demand)

When we hit 9-10pm we see another uplift in on-demand listening - Radio 1 dance music specialist shows like Annie Mac and Pete Tong really come into their own during these hours.

Interesting fact: The most browsed music category is Dance & Electronica.

Pillow Talk

Late in the evening, Radio 4 becomes more popular than Radio 1 in the iPlayer Radio app. We see even more on-demand programmes being consumed. The calming and intimate tones of speech radio stations dominate as people take their phones to bed with them, and overdriven guitars and filthy dubstep basslines are put to bed till the following day. Programmes such as Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime are popular and Radio 5 live also starts to outperform Radio 1 for late-night listening.

This is also the time that most alarms are set, and the sleep function (accessed from 'Night Mode' if you have audio playing) gets used most.

As I said in my introduction, these trends are really useful in helping develop new features and improvements in the app, both for iPhones and the work that is already underway bringing the iPlayer Radio app to Android phones in 2013.

As ever, your feedback on the app is appreciated. If you would like to send detailed feedback you can do so via radiofeedback@bbc.co.uk. It helps if you can provide specific information about how you are using this application such as handset type (e.g. iPhone 4/ iPhone 3GS/iPod Touch), connection type (e.g. WiFi/3G) and network operator.

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded and enjoyed thus far.

NB: All data is sourced from comScore | Digital Analytix

A record month for Audio and Music's websites

2011-05-09T16:40:00+00:00

Following the headlines in March's iPlayer stats pack that we published last month, I wanted to share some more details and insights about BBC Network Radio's interactive performance, as it was a record month for us. They say events drive reach, and plenty happened on the Radio websites in March that helps prove the adage. Reach to all BBC Radio sites hit 3.7 million average weekly unique browsers*. And if you factor in A&M's music and events websites, such as Music and Radio 1's Big Weekend, we recorded an overall reach for all BBC Audio and Music sites of 4.3 million UK average weekly unique browsers. That's an all-time high for us.

Online interest in Chris Moyles' marathon 52-hour broadcast for Comic Relief was a big part of this, pushing traffic to the Radio 1 site to a record 2.4m average weekly UK unique browsers. Live footage from the studio, carried on the Red Button, attracted 2.84 million viewers. And then there was Fearne Cotton. Her offer to appear in a swimsuit if the total raised by Moyles topped Â£2 million caused a surge of traffic that helped crash the Radio 1 site for a brief time. So, events do drive reach, and we've learnt some useful lessons there about capacity planning. On top of this, there have been about half a million clicks to view the section of the programme again via the website, and at Radio 1's official channel on YouTube.

We've had a superb month for live online listening. And although live listening via the internet still accounts for a relatively small amount of all digital consumption, we know people find it convenient to stream radio at their desks: compared to consumption via analogue platforms, online radio listening doesn't fall away so dramatically after radio's 'usual' breakfast time peak. In March, we recorded 29 million requests for live streams, 18% up on this time last year. Record performances across BBC network radio contributed to this, including 5 live sports extra, which nabbed 1.3m live stream requests for its World Cup Cricket coverage. Did I say... events drive reach?

We broke more records with our podcasts, delivering 12.3m successful downloads to UK subscribers in March. The Archers topped the list of our daily podcasts, with Scott Mills in second place. Interestingly, although Radio 4's landmark series A History of the World in 100 Objects ended last autumn, its podcasts remain popular enough to make it the 5th most popular daily podcast title in March. This is evidence of the demand there is for making podcasts available for longerÂ and of the public value we can create by opening up the archive. First indications from the Desert Island Discs archive are also very encouraging. I've just had a first sight of April's podcast results - they're looking equally promising, including several hundred thousand successful downloads of our Royal Wedding 2011 podcast. This included a lot of interest from users in English-speaking countries around the world such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. It's another good example of how events drive reach.

A final, encouraging thing to note is the steady growth in reach to A&M's websites optimised for mobile devices. We've done a lot of work over the past 2 years to improve the usability of those sites, including automatically tweaking the pages to suit the device in question, and adding the ability to stream live radio for many devices. Devices are becoming easier to use too, and the performance since the start of this year suggests that the effort is now paying off: significant numbers of users now accessing A&M's content via mobile. March was a great month for this. There was growth across the board, with new sites for Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and Radio 1's Big Weekend contributing to the increase. And there was especially strong growth for Radio 1 and 1Xtra, where all mobile devices are now covered with key services and where fans used their phones to join in the fun with Moyles & Co for Red Nose Day.Â Which all goes to show... well, you know what goes here.

* Unique Browsers: this is the term we use to describe a single computer accessing our websites. It's not the same as measuring 'people', and it's not a perfect proxy - but is the closest we have for now. One 'unique browser' is counted for every distinct 'cookie' which has visited a website within a given timeframe. In the BBC, this timeframe is one week. A cookie is a small piece of information that a server sends to your computer to identify that computer on its return. Whenever you clear your cookies, as some people regularly do, your computer is issued with a new cookie when you return to a website.

Alan Phillips is senior business manager, BBC Audio & Music Interactive

March 2011 BBC iPlayer stats: "38 million requests for Radio programmes"

2011-04-18T16:30:00+00:00

The performance pack for the BBC iPlayer covering March 2011 has been published today on the BBC Internet blog. Headlines from the Comms team include:

March 2011 saw a new record being set, with 38 million requests for Radio programmes, boosted significantly by World Cup Cricket 2011 coverage and Chris Moyles' Longest Show Ever for Comic Relief

Live streaming on BBC iPlayer was at the highest levels seen to date for both TV and radio - for TV making up 15% of all requests, and for radio, up to 75%

You can download a PDF of the BBC iPlayer stats for March 2011 from the BBC Internet blog.

Paul Murphy is the acting editor of the Radio blog

The image is from the BBC Archive. The caption reads: "Middle School Mathematics, 01/09/1963 Â© BBC picture shows - Dick Tahta, lecturer in Maths at Exeter University. Studio5, TVC"
Read the Next Web story: Radio Listening Via BBC iPlayer Hits Record High

Series catch-up for speech-based radio programmes is here

2011-02-24T18:13:05+00:00

Ever since 2002, when we started offering listeners the chance to hear radio programmes on demand via the original Radio Player, listeners have consistently asked to be able to catch up on all the episodes of series whilst that series is on air. There is nothing more frustrating, they told us, than getting interested in a serial in the third week and not being able to catch up on the first two parts which disappear after 7 days. In fact we became quite concerned that people might not even start listening to a serial if they felt they would not be able to keep up.

Well, today we have had good news. The BBC Trust has approved plans to introduce 'series catch-up' for radio and we will introduce it over the coming weeks. This means all episodes of a selected range of series will be available on our websites and via the BBC iPlayer until 7 days after the final instalment has gone out. The first series to offer this is the magnificent Classic Chandler on Radio 4.

Series catch-up covers speech-based programmes where we have the rights in place and where there is a clear narrative that progresses from one episode to the next. On Radio 4 look out in particular for future Classic Serial dramas such as Patrick O'Brien's The Mauritius Command and The History of Titus Groan as well as Agatha Christie dramatisations. Some of our big factual series such as The Reith Lectures or The Story of Economics or other long-running history series will benefit too as will comedy serials such as Ed Reardon and Clare in the Community. Series catch-up will be possible for landmark series on all of the BBC's radio networks.

We conducted a trial of this offer last year. One of the projects featured was the Complete Smiley. The results from the audience were very encouraging. 7000 people responded to our survey and the headlines were:

90% of users surveyed claimed they listened to more radio online as a consequence of series catch-up being available.
More than half listened to programmes they otherwise wouldn't have listened to.
More than half listened to more BBC radio online due to series catch-up.
37% said they had listened to episodes of series they would otherwise have missed without series catch-up.

We are working hard to make it easier for our audiences to hear more of our programmes online and this has been a good couple of weeks. The Series Catch up approval comes hot on the heels of the Radio 3 and Radio 4 service licence reviews in which the BBC Trust encouraged us to increase the amount of archive content we make available on our sites. As an example of this we have just launched a collection of interviews with the authors whose books are being featured on World Book Night on March 5th. There will be much more of this kind of activity and I will update you on our progress in the coming months.

Andrew Caspari is Head of Speech Radio and Classical Music, Interactive at the BBC

Read the BBC Trust's decision on series catch-up here.
Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams wrote about the Trust's review of service licences here on the blog and Director of Audio & Music Tim Davie responded in The Radio Times.
The illustration was created for the Classic Chandler season, one of those now available until seven days after the final transmission on the Radio 4 web site.

Delivering Quality First: plans for online radio

2011-01-25T18:11:36+00:00

Editor's note: Daniel Danker is the BBC Future Media & Technology manager responsible for building the new 'radio and music product'. In this post from the BBC Internet blog, he makes it clear that everything you can currently hear on the radio station web sites and on iPlayer will still be available in the new 'radio and music product' - SB.

Yesterday we announced the next phase of Putting Quality First. As part of that announcement, we made the first mention of our upcoming 'Radio and Music product', which created a bit of confusion about our plans for online radio: I hope this post explains in a little more detail...

Read the rest of this post and leave a comment on the BBC Internet blog.

BBC iPlayer Pop-Out Radio Console: new version

2010-10-01T17:31:15+00:00

Editor's note: Dave Price is the manager responsible for the new BBC radio iPlayer. He's written a blog post explaining its new functions for the BBC Internet blog - SB

Online listeners of BBC radio may have noticed the BBC iPlayer team recently launched a new version of the pop-out radio console.

Anthony Rose in his previous post described some of the new features in the latest version of iPlayer. In this post I wanted to focus on the enhancements we've made for our global radio audience...

Read the rest of the post and leave comments on the BBC Internet blog