We thought that it might be nice to share a little bit of the philosophy behind our app with you on here. It’s nothing too profound, but it should hopefully make for an interesting read (while we’ve got your attention!).
Let’s start off by going through some of our key principles – when building the app, one of the main bits of thinking behind it was the following,
”As Internet Radio is being broadcast to a truly Global audience, any app that offers the service of streaming it, such as UTuneMe, must look to offer its users a truly Global service.”
Not immediately obvious you might say, but what this means should become a little clearer with a bit of explanation.
Let’s start out with some context on what exactly it is that this phrase ‘Global audience’ involves.
According to a report from the CIA World Factbook in 2010, there are around 44,000 radio stations worldwide, and this figure is likely to have increased further in the years since. This is an enormous number already, especially when you think that increasingly we have access to nearly all of these instantly with just a swipe of our smartphone.
The technology for this is still quite new, but one thing that’s for certain is that there is an undeniable sense of freedom that comes with the realisation that, in theory, all of this Global audio information is pretty much instantly available to you already, even when you’re out on the move.
Free from the geographical confines of the FM / AM dial, you can listen to music from all over the world on Internet Radio anywhere you find yourself – at home, at work, at school, on the bus, at your tube stop (all that you need is an internet connection!).
Couple that up with an ever increasing choice of international stations to choose from and you’ve got a situation where, in terms of the technology on offer, you can pretty much listen to whatever you want to, anywhere in the world, at any point, so long as it’s being broadcast right now.
And that’s quite exciting.
But whilst this ever expanding choice of what is on offer to the listener is now intrinsic to the Global Radio Streaming experience – the commercial and informational content being broadcast alongside this (ads, offers, news, weather, travel etc) remains well and truly routed in the local.
This is a bit of an issue for the international listener. For example – what use for me is it to hear about a sale going on in Paris if I’m sitting on a tram listening to Parisian radio in London? When you’re broadcasting to a Global audience, would it not be better to be offering your international listeners something as well?
Bridging the gap between local broadcasting and global audience is something that UTuneMe is looking to help realise, using smartphone technology to help personalise exactly this sort of content.
The inspiration for doing this came from a personal realisation from CEO Shankar Meembat, experienced during his time as an Expat Radio Listener living in Finland,
“Living as an Expat I noticed that when I was streaming Radio Stations from overseas the ads that played on the Stations were not very relevant for me.”
“Whilst keeping up with news and music from back home, I was being served broadcast ads that were obviously only relevant to listeners in that part of the world.”
“What I noticed was that there must be thousands of ‘Wasted Listeners’ in exactly the same situation as me, listening to music from back at home and being served these bits of content that are not relevant to them every day.”
The UTuneMe app was built with this inspiration in mind – and uses geo-targeted technology to stream content to its users that is relevant to each listener then and there, no matter what they’re listening to, nor where they’re listening to it from.
“Whilst the technology is not yet in full operation, very soon UTuneMe users living abroad are going to have the ability to listen to the radio in Poland, France, India wherever, whilst being served offers, news and updates unique to their exact location at that time – London, Berlin, Ibiza, you name it!”
“We are now just working through signing up our partners to get this service to the listeners, and we believe that it really is going to revolutionise the way that people listen to Global Radio.”
“It’s a truly international app, and a very exciting prospect for Expat listeners, as well as everybody else.”
UTuneMe is now available to download for free on Android and iPhone. Get it down now and start enjoying the benefits of streaming Global Radio immediately.