TuneIn Radio: Music & Sports

Review by eFreeware

There is a gap in most people's listening setup. Music apps are good at playing what an algorithm picks, but they are poor substitutes for a live broadcast: a match that is happening right now, a news hour that runs in real time, or a local station from a city you no longer live in. Broadcast radio has always done that job, and the awkward part has been getting to it from a phone.

TuneIn Radio is one of the longest-running attempts to solve that problem. It is published by TuneIn Inc, sits in the Music & Audio category on Google Play, and has been available since September 2010. The pitch is simple: one app for live AM/FM stations, news, sports and podcasts, rather than a separate app for each of those things.

The app is free to download and has been installed more than 100 million times, with a 4.7 average from well over two million ratings. Those numbers tell you it has found a large audience, but they say nothing about whether it fits how you listen. That is what the rest of this review is about.

The listeners this fits

The clearest fit is anyone who treats radio as a habit rather than a novelty. If you want a station playing in the background while you cook, work in the garage or eat breakfast, this is built for exactly that. The catalog runs to more than 100,000 AM/FM stations drawn from over 197 countries, so the odds of finding something familiar, or something from a place you have a connection to, are good.

Sports followers are the second group. The app covers MLB, NFL, NHL and college sports, with sports talk from stations such as ESPN Radio, talkSPORT and Fox Sports Radio, plus on-demand shows like Undisputed, First Take and The Bill Simmons Podcast. Someone who wants the pregame argument as much as the game itself will find plenty here.

News listeners get a similar deal. The developer lists CNN, FOX News Radio, Bloomberg Radio, CNBC, NPR and BBC among the available sources, alongside local and regional stations and podcasts such as The Daily and Up First. If your day includes a fixed news block, this covers it without much effort.

Podcast listeners are served too, with well-known shows including Stuff You Should Know, Hidden Brain and Wow in the World available on demand. The common thread across all of these groups is a preference for live or scheduled audio over a playlist someone else assembled.

Live stations and music programming

The core of the app is live radio. You browse stations by genre, from Today's Hits and Classic Rock to Smooth Jazz, and the developer points to named stations such as 106.7 Lite FM, Power 105.1 and 102.7 KIIS-FM as examples of what is carried. For anyone who grew up with a preset dial in the car, this is the closest digital equivalent.

Apple Music Radio is now part of the lineup as well. Apple Music 1, Chill, Country, Club and Hits stream live inside TuneIn, which means listeners can follow shows built around artists such as Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd and Frank Ocean without leaving the app. That is a meaningful addition for people who like curated radio rather than picking tracks themselves.

What I appreciate about this arrangement is that it keeps the live element intact. Stations are broadcast as they air, so what you hear is what everyone else is hearing at that moment. That shared timing is the point of radio, and it is the thing most streaming services cannot reproduce.

News, sports and talk

News coverage spans local, national and international sources. Alongside the larger names, the app carries regional outlets, among them WNYC-FM, KQED-FM and WTOP in Washington DC, which matters if your interest is local rather than global. A listener who moved away from a city can keep up with its newsroom, and someone who simply wants a reliable hourly bulletin has several to choose from.

Sports is where the app puts a lot of its weight. The developer describes curated content and game-time notifications so you can follow a team through a season, and the talk lineup is deep. Between live game coverage and the argument shows around it, there is enough for a full season of listening.

The podcast side fills the gaps between live events. On-demand sports shows sit next to general-interest podcasts, so the app can cover a commute, a workout or an evening without switching to something else. I would expect most people to settle into a handful of stations and shows and ignore the rest, which is fine.

Listening across devices

TuneIn runs on iOS and tablets and works with connected devices. Voice control is supported through Amazon Alexa and Google Home, which suits a kitchen or living room setup where reaching for a phone is inconvenient.

CarPlay is supported, and the app also works in Teslas, Mercedes and Volvos. That combination of phone, home speaker and dashboard is the practical argument for keeping everything in one app rather than spreading stations across several.

A recent update fixed a Cancel button on the Pick Your Teams screen that was hidden behind the navigation bar, and removed an unwanted shadow near the navigation bar while scrolling. Nothing dramatic, but it suggests the app is still being maintained rather than left alone.

What the free version and Premium cost you

The app itself costs nothing to download. It also offers in-app purchases, and the main one is TuneIn Premium, which adds features on top of the free experience.

Premium is described as including commercial-free coverage of NHL games, college sports and racing without blackouts, ad-free news from sources such as CNBC, CNN and FOX News Radio, and commercial-free music stations. It also includes access to more than 100,000 audiobooks at no extra cost and fewer ads across the full station catalog.

Subscriptions are bought inside the free app, with the fee shown before payment and charged monthly or annually depending on your country. The subscription renews automatically unless auto-renew is switched off at least 24 hours before the current period ends, and billing runs through your iTunes account. Auto-renew can be turned off at any time in your account settings.

One detail worth knowing is that the app includes Nielsen measurement software, which contributes to market research along the lines of television ratings.

How it compares with other audio apps

The most useful comparison is with a dedicated music service. Those are built around on-demand catalogs and personalization, and they are very good at it. TuneIn is built around live broadcast instead, and it covers a wider spread of audio than Pandora or iHeartRadio, with more variety and control. Whether that holds for your taste is something you can only judge by browsing the station list.

A podcast app is the other alternative. If your listening is entirely on-demand shows, a focused podcast player will do the job with less around it. TuneIn's advantage is that the same app also carries live news, sports and music, so you are not juggling three icons to cover a day.

For sports specifically, the choice comes down to how much you want beyond the game itself. An app tied to a single league will cover that league closely. TuneIn spreads across MLB, NFL, NHL and college sports in one place, which suits someone whose interests move with the season.

A dependable dial for live audio

TuneIn Radio does one thing well and does it broadly: it puts live radio, news, sports and podcasts in a single place and lets you carry them between your phone, your home speakers and your car. Premium is there for anyone who wants commercial-free sports, news, music and audiobooks.

It suits listeners who value live and scheduled audio, sports fans who follow more than one league, and anyone who wants a station from another city within reach. If your listening is entirely built around an on-demand music catalog, a dedicated music service will serve you better.

For everyone else, the combination of scale, longevity and a strong rating makes this an easy app to try. Install it, find two or three stations you like, and see whether live radio still earns a place in your day.

What's new

We are working to make some minor adjustments and improvements to give you an overall better listening experience. • Fixed a visual issue where the “Cancel” button could be hidden behind the navigation bar on the “Pick Your Teams” screen. • Cleaned up an unwanted shadow that appeared near the navigation bar while scrolling. For technical help, please email [email protected].