TuneIn’s Weekend Wrap

By Michael McGeary | Published: July 15, 2011

Did you miss me? As nice as a week on a beach was, it’s great to be back here at TuneIn and as this week draws to a close, you’re probably looking for some cool stuff to listen to this weekend. As always, we’ve got you covered.

First, a public service announcement. Having traveled to LA-LA-Land last weekend, I can report that you can’t move more than about 100 yards without seeing a sign for this, but in case you’ve been living on Mars (with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears) CARMAGEDDON IS UPON US. Which is to say that the Sepulveda Pass project on the I-405 Freeway has reached a critical point where CalTrans needs to shut the freeway down between the 10 and 101 Freeways, effectively cutting off access to West LA from The Valley. So whether you’re in LA and just trying to get from Reseda to LAX, or you’re like me and want to have a hearty laugh at the fact that a 10-mile freeway closure can paralyze a large American city, you can TuneIn to KNX 1070 News Radio Los Angeles for all the latest updates all weekend long. (And if you need a getaway from the hectic traffic, check out Indie 103.1 from LA, especially Jose Maldonado’s Breakfast with the Smiths program, airing at Noon ET/9am PT on Sunday.)

Across the pond at Royal St. George’s, Golf’s 140th Open Championship is well underway with Northern Ireland’s Darren Clarke and America’s Lucas Glover tied for the lead at -4. You can follow the final rounds of exciting golf action thanks to our friends at BBC Radio 5 Live as they anchor wall-to-wall coverage from the course all weekend long. Play gets underway each day from Noon BST/7am ET/4am PT.

Meanwhile, the US Women’s National Soccer Team, following their epic wins against Brazil and France will play Japan in the World Cup Final, taking part in the game for the first time since their historic win at the Rose Bowl in 1999. ESPN Radio has just announced (as of this writing) that they will cover the game live and in full from Frankfurt am Main, and we’ll have it for you on TuneIn starting at 2:30pm ET/11:30am PT.

Finally, as we mentioned yesterday, we lost two stalwarts of alternative radio as WRXP in New York and Chicago’s Q101 went off the air this week. In their absence, Scott gave some recommendations about how to fill the void, and I’ll add one more. Check out WEQX, serving Albany, the Capital Region of Upstate New York and Southern Vermont and playing alternative favorites, deep tracks and emerging artists better than a lot of places out there. And enjoy!

However you spend your weekend, whether stuck in gridlock or laughing about it or anywhere in between, we hope you spend it with us! Did we miss something you’d like to see in The Wrap? Let us know! Drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter.

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TuneIn’s Weekend Wrap

By Michael McGeary | Published: July 1, 2011

Parades. Fireworks. Cookouts. All part of the experience in America for the Fourth of July, all things that can be enjoyed no matter where you are with TuneIn. I’ll be spending my Fourth where we invented the Fourth of July, Eastern Massachusetts, home of the original Tea Party - yes, I admit Philadelphia can claim the actual Declaration of Independence, but we like to think the values and so forth imbued in the document were born of the battlefields of Lexington and Concord. There’s a whole lot going on for you to listen to on TuneIn this weekend, so let’s get right to it.

As we mentioned a couple days ago, Phish’s Super Ball IX is underway in Upstate New York. LivePhish Radio has wall-to-wall coverage all weekend long of all 7 sets they’ll be playing throughout the days and nights.

Elsewhere, the All England Club hosts the Wimbledon Men’s and Women’s finals this weekend with play getting underway from 2pm BST/9am ET/6am PT and you can hear the coverage of both days on Radio Wimbledon. Though it seems slightly unpatriotic to be talking about our former colonial masters at a time like this – unless you’d like to remember the time we opened up a big can of whoop-tushy at Yorktown that is…

Ok, back stateside. We have a whole load of great Americana you can listen to with our Fourth of July channel but one to highlight in particular is the grandest celebration of our nation’s birth taking place, oddly enough, right here in Boston. The Boston Pops Symphony Orchestra, joined by special guests including country superstar Martina McBride, celebrate along the banks of the Charles River with an unparalleled homage to America as Pops Goes the Fourth! Live coverage is available on TuneIn, thanks to our friends at WBZ beginning at 7pm ET/4pm PT.

However you celebrate the Fourth, we hope you have a great weekend and we hope, as always that you bring TuneIn along for the ride. What’s your favorite music or event to listen to on the Fourth? Let us know and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

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Phree Phish! – Super Ball IX on TuneIn

By Michael McGeary | Published: June 29, 2011

*Homer Simpson not scheduled to appear.

Phish Phans! Your ship has come in. Phish are playing their ninth installment of Super Ball this weekend at Watkins Glen in upstate New York, and TuneIn has your ticket to all 7 sets they’ll be playing from the international raceway.

LivePhish Radio will be broadcasting “The Bunny” all weekend long, with the sights, sounds – and smells? – of the festival and all of the great live sets for the boys from Burlington. But now, whether you’re sitting by the Farmhouse, listening on your mobile phone, (never mind the cluster flies) or Bouncing Around the Room drinking Bathtub Gin with your Logitech Squeezebox cranked up (I’ll stop now), you can listen along all weekend long.

The fun gets started tomorrow afternoon when The Bunny goes live, leading up to the band’s first set at 7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT on Friday night, followed by a second set Friday night. They play three sets on Saturday starting at 3pm ET/12pm PT and close with another two sets on Sunday starting at 7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT. Listen to it all, duck in and out, no matter how you want to check it out, you can enjoy the jams all weekend long on TuneIn!

What jams are you looking forward to hearing this weekend? Let us know. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

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TuneIn highlights for the week

By scott | Published: June 27, 2011

by Scott Fleischer

Station of the week: U2 OutLoud Radio

Whether or not you are attending U2′s ongoing world tour, you can listen to U2 24/7 with U2 OutLoud Radio available via TuneIn.  The station plays music spanning the band’s 30+ year career, including plenty of live rarities.

DJ of the week: Bob Harris

Bob Harris plays the latest Americana and roots music weekly on his show on BBC Radio 2 on Thursdays at 2 PM Eastern.  Previous guests on the show have included Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Justin Townes Earle.

More music picks for the week:

 

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TuneIn’s Weekend Wrap

By Michael McGeary | Published: June 24, 2011

This weekend wrap takes you across the pond, where so much is happening in the UK, it barely fits squarely inside one weekend! The good news for you is, you don’t have to spend money for that plane ticket and hotel, just kick back with TuneIn wherever you are enjoy the full weekend’s excitement from Merry Ol’ England.

The premier music event in the world kicks off today on Worthy Farm in Pilton as the 2011 Glastonbury Festival gets underway. The bill is completely and utterly insane when it comes right down to it: Coldplay, U2, Beyonce, BB King, Morrissey, Mumford & Sons, Fleet Foxes, Big Boi, Queens of the Stone Age, ::deep breath::, Lykke Li, Suzanne Vega, Flogging Molly, Chumbawamba (ed. Chumbawamba?), Billy Bragg – and THAT barely scratches the surface. Worthy FM is the official station of the festival and they are broadcasting from the festival grounds 24 hours a day all weekend long. Plus, BBC 6 Music will be offering highlights from the stage and around the grounds all weekend. Don’t miss this incredible weekend of music!

And because, apparently, that wasn’t enough music for the UK this weekend (I mean, really, how spoiled can you be?!), Hard Rock Calling is also taking place in Hyde Park featuring our boys from New Jersey, Bon Jovi. Absolute Radio will have their set starting at 7pm BST/2pm ET/11am PT on Saturday.

It will be easy to be on music overload this weekend, for sure, so you also have the option of checking out one of the world’s foremost sporting events as The 125th Championships, Wimbledon also see middle round play on Saturday. Barring more rain, they’ll be off for Middle Sunday, of course, but you can follow the action and highlights all weekend long with Radio Wimbledon.

And as for me, your humble blogger is off getting married today, so let me know what good stuff I’ve missed on Twitter and Facebook, and I’ll be sure to check it out. On Monday. :)

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Updated: TuneIn for iOS

By Michael McGeary | Published: June 22, 2011

When we launched the new tunein.com last week, one thing you may have noticed is the new headline we put on our front page.

Radio. Rediscovered.

One of the coolest parts of TuneIn, no matter which platform you’re listening on, is the ability to discover great content from all around the world. Now, with our new iOS app being released today, we’re making that process even easier. On the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (and coming soon to other mobile devices), we’ve enhanced your ability to listen to and discover new music, sports, news and talk from beyond your borders or around your corner. And we’ve done that while giving the app a simple, intuitive, sleek new design.

Here’s what’s new in our latest release:

  • Recommendations Based on Your Music – You spend a lot of time putting together your iPod library: cultivating it, curating it, putting together mixes of songs you love or getting your favorite albums together and synced up. But you’re busy. You don’t always have a lot of time to find new music to add to your collection. The good news is there are a lot of great people – DJs at radio stations all over the world – who spend their days scouring every source they can find to bring you the best in new music, and classic hits you might have missed. With this update, TuneIn will now look to your collection and recommend new stations for you to listen to that play the music you already love.
  • Song Tagging – Now you can tag songs you hear on the go and come back to them later. Look them up anytime, just like your preset stations, and our directory will tell you when that song is playing on stations all over the world so you can TuneIn 24/7, or you can purchase in the iTunes Music Store, and get back to that song you love.
  • Real-Time Search Results – Why wait for search results when the technology exists for you to begin seeing them as you type? Yeah, we don’t know either. We built real-time results into this update so you can find what you’re looking for and start listening to a new station faster.
  • “Shake It Up” - Picture this. You’re listening to Hot 97 and Funkmaster Flex had a great mix going, but maybe you’re kicking back with your friends and you want to hear something a little different. So you pick up your iPhone and give it a little shake and BOOM, all of a sudden KDAY is blowing up with Old School jams. Shake it again, and it’s 99.7 Now here in the Bay Area, pumping today’s biggest hits. It’s that simple. Discover a new station playing the type of music you’re listening to with a quick shake of your device.

We’ve also included a few other bug fixes to improve performance, as well as making the in-app browser functionality voluntary. These improvements are just the first step in the next generation of our product, with iOS leading the way. We hope you enjoy them.

Let us know how the app is working for you and what you’re discovering along the way! Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

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TuneIn highlights for the week

By scott | Published: June 20, 2011

by Scott Fleischer

Station of the week: Worthy FM

The official station of this week’s Glastonbury Festival, Worthy FM, broadcasts 24 hours a day with news about the festival and interviews with many of this year’s artists.

 

 

DJ of the week:  Steve Lamacq

Steve Lamacq is one of the most well-respected BBC DJs.  He currently appears on BBC 6 Music on weekdays from 11 AM – 2 PM Eastern.  This week, he will be anchoring Glastonbury coverage on BBC 6 Music, beginning on Wednesday at 2 PM Eastern.

More music picks for the week

 

 

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TuneIn’s Weekend Wrap

By Michael McGeary | Published: June 17, 2011

So, we’re all a little tired over here today. The coffee machine has gotten an extra special workout after the team worked late into the night getting the new tunein.com ready to go. I know I, for one, will be heading over to tunein.com this weekend to scope out cool things to listen to. And you can too! Let’s get started.

Outside Washington, the 111th United States Open is underway and Irish phenom Rory McIlroy has sprinted ahead of the pack firing 65 and 66 on consecutive days, setting an all time, 36-hole Open record. Can he keep it up and blow the field away? You can find out and TuneIn to all the action with our friends at the BBC. They’ll have live coverage from the Saturday and Sunday rounds, starting at 9pm BST/4pm ET (Sports Extra on Saturday, Five Live on Sunday) to see who will be this year’s US champion.

In music, our friends at New Normal Rock are replaying their first “Vans Warped Tour Radio Hour” from this morning, again tonight at 9pm ET in case you missed it. Get ready for a summer full of alt/ska/punk tunes with interviews, highlights from tours past and music from some emerging artists that will be featured on tour this year.

Also, tonight at 9:30 ET/6:30 PT, fresh off their triumphant performance last weekend at Bonnaroo, My Morning Jacket will be playing a live set broadcast from Chicago on 93XRT.

And finally, in what I promise will be my last mention of hockey for at least three months, the Boston Bruins trounced the Vancouver Canucks to win their first Stanley Cup in 39 years on Wednesday night. They’ve brought the cup back to Boston to celebrate with THE BEST SPORTS FANS IN THE WORLD. GO BRUINS!!! WHOOOOOO!!! … Ahem. Sorry, old habits die hard. Anyway, check in with all the great celebrations and highlights from the parade all day tomorrow on WEEI and 98.5 The Sports Hub.

Did we miss something you’re listening to this weekend? Are you a Canucks fan who wants to give me a piece of your mind? Let us know! Join the conversation of Facebook and Twitter.

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TuneIn.com – Radio. Rediscovered.

By Michael McGeary | Published: June 16, 2011

You might remember a couple months ago when we relaunched tunein.com as the gateway to 50,000 (and growing!) radio stations from all across the world. Today, we’ve made a quantum leap in our efforts to bring you the best experience in listening to online radio, and we want to tell you about it. Our design team, along with our developers and engineers have been working tirelessly since the night of that last launch to bring forward the product we’re launching today. And to say we’re proud of the work they’ve all done is an understatement.

The new tunein.com embodies more of the look and feel you’re used to from our TuneIn app experience, while also incorporating some brand new features that will enhance your listening experience. So whether you’re at your desk during the workweek, on the train with your laptop, or by the pool reading the news on the weekend, the new tunein.com is your destination for discovering and listening to great radio content from around the world.

Here’s what’s new on tunein.com:

  • Completely revamped design – Beyond the new look and feel of the site, tunein.com is better organized to help you discover new stations from around the world, or around the block. Now you get more targeted local suggestions and global stations presented to you based on what you like to listen to.
  • Song tagging – “Man, what was that Adele song I was listening to? ‘Rolling in the…something?’ Deep, maybe? Oh, who remembers…” That will never happen again. Now, when you’re listening to a song you like, simply click “Add Song” in the player. Just like your presets, the song information will be held onto, so you can come back later and buy the song, or check your tagged songs and see when they’re playing on virtually any station worldwide at any time.
  • Artist & Genre Recommendations – You love the blues. You could listen to Howlin’ Wolf or John Lee Hooker all day. You might even know the stations you love. But then, maybe it’s a Saturday, you’re stuck in the office pushing paper and you say to yourself, “I wonder what else is out there?” While we might not be able to help you with the existential questions, we can help with new music discovery. Now when you search by genre on tunein.com, we will show you a real-time, updated list of popular artists in that genre. And before you know it, you’re rocking out to some Keb’ Mo on the Maine Blues Project.
  • Artist Album Artwork – We’re rolling out an upgrade that will automatically update the album artwork in our player to match whatever song is playing. Some stations like KEXP and The Current already have this feature.

So with those changes and many more, we’re very proud of the new experience on tunein.com and we hope you enjoy it. Let us know what you think. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter and tell us about your experience with our new site.

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Updated: TuneIn for Android

By Michael McGeary | Published: June 14, 2011

Android users, you have spoken and we have listened. Today, TuneIn is proud to announce the release of an update for both TuneIn Radio and TuneIn Radio Pro that will provide a better experience for finding and listening to great radio from around the world with the most user-focused and reliable experience possible.

This update gives Android users:

A smoother listening experience, with fixed buffering issues for the HTC EVO 4G and Motorola Droid phones, as well as certain AAC streams

Longer battery life through less power consumption

Improved access to your favorite stations, by fixing lost presets when associating the app with your TuneIn account

Increased firmware support, with the home screen widget supporting Android 1.6 and above

Faster interaction through improved UI responsiveness

So there you have it, we hope this update will provide an even better experience for all of you on Team Android. Be sure to upgrade your software version today to enjoy the new and improved TuneIn Radio and TuneIn Radio Pro for Android!

How’d we do? Let us know! Drop us a comment on Facebook or Tweet at us.

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