Apple radio app. 5 things you didn t know Apple Music could do

things you didn‘t know Apple Music could do

Watch TV shows, listen to the radio and get music inspiration from your friends.

Having so many online music services to choose from – including a growing number of ad-free premium services from regular radio stations – is great news for subscribers, as it means they need to keep innovating to attract and retain an audience.

Apple Music, the UK’s fourth most popular music streaming service after Spotify, YouTube and Amazon Prime Music, is no exception. With a library of more than 90 million songs and super-smooth apps for PCs, Macs and smartphones, it’s well worth considering if you’ve not yet signed up to a service – or you’re looking to switch.

And, whether you’re a newcomer or an old hand, if all you do is stream music, you’re missing a trick. Here are five things we bet you didn‘t know you could do with Apple Music.

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Listen on any device, anywhere

Although initially only available on devices running iOS, Apple Music apps are now installed by default on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and can be added to Android, Windows, Playstation 5, Sonos, and Amazon Echo devices. If you don’t have access to any of those, you can also stream the service through a browser using the web interface at music.Apple.com.

Listen to the radio

You’ll find a Radio icon at the bottom of the screen in the Apple Music mobile app and in the sidebar on your computer. Tap or click it to listen to Apple Music 1, which plays a mixture of music from the 80s, 90s and 2000s, or one of two new stations – Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country.

Apple Music 1 broadcasts from studios in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville and London, and counts Zane Lowe and Elton John among its line-up of presenters. Although you don’t need to subscribe to Apple Music to listen to Apple’s own radio stations, signing up to the service lets you listen to any show that’s already aired whenever you like.

But it’s not only Apple’s own station you can listen to on the app. To listen to broadcast radio, including your local stations, scroll down and click See All in the Local Broadcasters section. If you don’t see your preferred station right away, go to Search and type the station’s name to listen live.

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Look up lyrics

What’s the name of that song? You know the one we mean. It’s sung by that guy. Something about late nights in the middle of June?

For those tip-of-your-tongue moments when you just can’t remember the name of a song or the artist who sings it, Apple Music lets you search for tracks using the lyrics. And if you can’t be bothered to type them in, you can always ask Siri.

Although it doesn’t rely on Apple Music, you can also ask your phone to help you identify a song that’s playing in the background when you’re next in a pub or coffee shop. Open Siri or Google Assistant and ask ‘What’s playing now’. Your phone will listen for a while and, if it finds a match, reveal all.

(It’s Heatwaves by Glass Animals, by the way.)

Mix it up

Every Friday, Apple Music offers up a new playlist called New Music Mix, inspired by the songs you’ve listened to the most in the last seven days. As these change every week, you’ll have to save any of the New Music Mixes you’re particularly fond of as new playlists. To do this, press the three dots to the right of the playlist and select ‘Add to Playlist’, then give it a name.

GHI Tip: To save playlists you’ll need to have iCloud Music Library switched on. If you leave this on all the time, though, you won’t be able to sync music manually from iTunes to your iPhone. Bear this in mind if you transfer your own music files to your iPhone regularly.

Get right into the music

Stereo splits tracks into two, for your left and right ears. Apple Music has gone one step further, with parts of the library now supporting Dolby Atmos.

Described as an ‘innovative audio technology’, this breaks out of the confines of two channels, so artists and producers can position instruments and performers where they like in the virtual soundscape that surrounds you when you play it back. That way, as you move your head, your ears will line up with different parts of the studio, and the effect would be similar to what you’d experience if you were standing in the middle of the Band.

It’s not supported by every track, as most were recorded before Dolby Atmos was available. Neither is it supported on all hardware. Head tracking requires an iPhone or iPad paired to Apple’s own Airpods Pro, Airpods Max or third-generation Airpods earbuds.

After the Death of iTunes Real Internet Radio Is Back on the macOS Music App

Back in June I openly worried about the future state of internet radio on the Mac with the arrival of macOS Catalina and the demise of iTunes. While iTunes has its faults, it still provided a simple way to tune in stations from around the world without using a web browser, whether you found the station in its own directory or plugged in the station’s stream URL yourself.

I’m happy to report that the situation is not as dire as I’d feared.

An early release of the Music app on both MacOS and iOS featured only a handful of carefully chosen stations outside of Beats 1 Radio and Apple’s own curated stations, the latter only available with a paid Apple Music subscription. However, now the Music app now gives you access to a very comprehensive selection of both terrestrial and pure-play internet stations across the U.S. and from around the world.

This is very good news, though Music isn’t yet a full-fledged iTunes replacement. The first big difference is that the Music app doesn’t really let you browse the world of internet radio. Sure, there’s a “Radio” button in the menu, but what you get is mostly populated by Beats 1 and Apple Music stations, along with a smattering of big public and commercial stations. Scroll down and you see a menu item, “Radio Stations,” that seems promising. But click on it and you just get more featured Apple Music stations, along with a list of genres that – you guessed it – deliver even more Apple Music stations.

The Vagaries of the Search

So where are all the real internet radio stations? Search, you must, young Jedi.

Indeed, I was able to find pretty much every station on my local Portland, Oregon radio dial. When I surveyed other Mac internet radio apps earlier this year, I discovered that stations owned by either iHeart or Entercom were often missing. That’s because these two radio giants have started pulling their stations off rival apps. iHeart only wants you to hear its stations on iHeartRadio and Entercom only wants you to hear its stations through Radio.com.

The Music app solves this problem by plugging into the iHeartRadio, Radio.com and TuneIn directories. At least in the U.S., when combined, these directories cover just about every broadcast station that has a live stream, as well as most internet stations that wish to be found. When you search for a specific station, the app displays what directory the result came from.

But search has serious limits. When I searched for “college radio” it returned only about 40 results. Included were ESPN College Football and some other results that indicate the search was only performed on station names. If you were hoping to find your local college station but don’t remember the call letters, you’re likely out of luck.

The same thing was true when searching for jazz or heavy metal. All is good if the genre is in the station’s name, but otherwise you’ll only see a small percentage of stations that might otherwise qualify.

This is curious, because all three directories Music relies on do classify stations by category or genre. The metadata is in there, but Music doesn’t search it. Combined with the inability to browse internet radio stations, this makes Music a poor way to discover internet radio stations.

Still, if you know a station’s call letter or name and its in the iHeart Radio.com or TuneIn directory – a pretty good chance – then the app is a fine way to listen to internet radio without a browser. In fact, if this is your use case, because it combines these three different directories, Music is your best choice for a desktop internet radio app.

Triode – a Promising iTunes Replacement?

I was reminded to check back in on this topic because I just learned about a new internet radio app for MacOS, iOS and tvOS. MacStories positively reviewed this app, Triode, calling it, “an excellent addition across nearly the full range of Apple’s platforms.”

I excitedly tried it out, only to run into the same limitations that hamper the other apps I surveyed: no stations from iHeart or Entercom. On the one hand, as a lover of great non-commercial stations and strange, eclectic internet radio, this isn’t necessarily a huge restriction.

I was immediately impressed with Triode on startup, as it displayed a wonderful selection of truly great independent terrestrial and internet stations, including San Francisco’s BFF.fm and SomaFM, Denver’s jazz KUVO, New Jersey’s WFMU, The Current from Minnesota Public Radio and Radio Survivor affiliate XRAY.fm here in Portland. It’s wonderful to see these recommendations rather than just a pile of big city, highly rated commercial and public stations.

When I searched for “college radio” I got back dozens upon dozens of results – more than I had the patience to count. Same for metal, jazz and blues. Clearly, Triode is searching station descriptions, categories and genres, not just names.

If you don’t find a station in the directory you can add it to Triode if you know the stream URL. Now that’s very iTunes-live behavior.

Nevertheless, I suspect that the lack of big U.S. commecial stations is a drawback that will make this more of a niche app rather than a true competitor for Apple’s own Music app. Radio nerds who love independent stations and don’t want to pick through Apple’s subscription-only offerings to find their favorites are the target audience.

While Triode is free, you can only save stations as favorites with a paid subscription for 99 cents a month, 9.99 a year or 19.99 for a forever plan. By comparison, this is a feature you get for free with TuneIn as long as you’re willing to set up a free account. Plus you’ll get access to pretty much the same catalog of stations. A Triode paid subscription also delivers high resolution album art displayed for each track, a feature whose utility holds little appeal for me.

Consolidation Is To Blame

Now, the limits of Triode’s directory aren’t the fault of the app developer. The guilty parties are iHeartRadio and Entercom, two of the largest radio companies in the U.S. which also don’t want their stations found outside their own app platforms.

Of course you can still listen to these stations on your computer… for now. Ultimately it’s consolidation that keeps independent radio apps from having access to these companies’ streams. Luckily, there are still thousands upon thousands of smaller and independent stations more than happy to be found and streamed through whatever app you might be using.

The situation parallels what we’re seeing in video streaming. Where just a few years ago you might only need to use one or two apps or subscription services – like Netflix and Hulu – to get a pretty wide variety of movies and programs, now you need like six or seven.

I’d hate to see other radio companies follow iHeart’s and Entercom’s lead and set up their own closed app platforms, requiring a listener to have five or six different apps installed just to hear all the stations on their local dial. It could be enough to drive folks away from internet radio.

Or maybe just drive them to their trusty terrestrial radio receiver, which already gets all these stations.

Support from readers like you make content like this possible. Please take a moment to support Radio Survivor on Patreon!

About Paul Riismandel

Paul Riismandel is co-founder and operations director of Radio Survivor. He is also Chief Insights Officer for Signal Hill Insights, a leading audio research firm. Paul has more than 25 years of experience in non-commercial radio and instructional media.

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Apple radio app

What is Receiver?

Receiver is the Radio App for iOS, Android, macOS, fireTV and AppleTV. Receiver offers the complete radio station catalogue. including more than 40,000 stations and over 25,000 podcasts. You can sync your favorite stations across your devices with dropbox or iCloud.

Siri Shortcuts for iOS

With the Siri shortcuts it is possible to start any radio station by voice input. Each radio station can be assigned an individual command, which then allows the station to be played or stopped via Siri. With the Siri shortcuts, radio streams can now also be played directly on the HomePod via voice commands.

CarPlay Support

With the new CarPlay support Receiver comes now finally also into the vehicle. This means that all users of the Receiver iPhone app now have a slim, easy-to-use radio on their CarPlay system.

4 reasons why Receiver Internet Radio App is great

Worlds best radio stations

We give you a choice of more than 40,000 radio stations. Browse stations by genre, region, language, popularity, or even sound quality. Get an overview of the most popular radio stations in your area.

All station podcasts and more

If you don’t find any suitable live radio shows, have a look into one of over 25,000 podcasts on demand. While listening to a live radio station it is easy to see all the podcasts the station provides.

Sync your favourites over iCloud or Dropbox

Sync your favourite stations and podcasts and gain acces to them on all of your iOS, Android, Apple TV or Fire TV without the need of any third party registration.

Radio clock on iPhone and iPad

Using the extensive alarm function of Receiver allows you to wake up from a radio station, a Podcast or an alarm sound.

Best Radio Apps for iPhone/iPod to Turn iPhone into Portable Radio

As the iPhone users, you will not miss to listen to radio for your ear enjoyment. However, which radio app is the best one for iPhone? This post will list the best free radio apps for iPhone iPad iPod.

It is nice to have thousands of songs we love with us at app time in our iPhone/iPod, but sometimes we may need some variety. We want to discover some new music, or we are tired of music and want to listen to some audio books or sports news. Under those circumstances, you can consider to have a radio app for iPhone.

Free Radio App for iPhone

Internet radio app for iPhone is a good way to discover new music, listen to sports news, podcasts, radio shows. Free online radio became so popular that it has replaced traditional radio stations. In the following article, we will list several best 10 radio apps for iPhone, hope you can find your favorite one.

Part 1. Top 10 free radio apps for iPhone

iTunes Music

Free radio app for iPhone. iTunes Music

iTunes Radio is the Internet radio provided by Apple. It is available in the Music app on iPhone and iTunes 11.1. The radio is only accessible by Apple Music subscribers. It is a free service with some occasional ads. Most functions of iTunes Radio had become available in 100 countries, although iTunes Radio itself remained limited to the United States and Australia as a free service.

Simple Radio

Free radio app for iPhone. Simple Radio

Simple Radio is the simple AM/FM radio app to listen to your favorite AM/FM and online radio stations with an iPhone. It provides trending music, specific music genres like Rock, Pop, Jazz, etc. live sports, breaking news, talk radio, etc. in its free version. Also you can take the premium to set the sleep time and avoid the ad in this app.

iHeartRadio

Free radio app for iPhone. iHeartRadio

Declared as the best streaming radio app by CNET, iHeartRadio is the most popular free music Internet AM/FM radio stations. This radio app for iPhone gives you free access to more than 750 radio stations from across the country, which enables you to find any music or other content you like.

Pandora

Free radio app for iPhone. Pandora Radio App for iPhone

Pandora Radio is probably the oldest free Internet radio in the USA. You can listen to Pandora Radio online, on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch, and desktop. Pandora allows you to start with an artist you like and branch out into similar music from there, based on your feedback and Pandora’s huge database of likes and dislikes from users like you.

Beats 1

Free radio app for iPhone. Beats 1

If you are looking for a radio app for iPhone that stay committed with Apple company, you can choose Beats 1. The radio service is deeply integrated with Apple Music, so that once you become a subscriber to Apple Music, you can get this exclusive, high-quality, worldwide radio station on iPhone.

TuneIn Radio

Free radio app for iPhone. TuneIn Radio App

TuneIn Radio is not a mostly popular iOS radio app, but it does its job well. This radio features the best interface and a great among of resources with over 50,000 stations and 120,000 shows. You’ll not only be able to listen to over 40,000 broadcast radio streams with this free radio app, but also check in with well-know talk shows and audiobooks as you like.

Audials Radio

Free radio app for iPhone. Audials Radio

Audials Radio is the best iPhone radio app for the eclectic listener. It comes with a huge collection of Internet radio stations, including videos and podcasts. It is especially helpful for listeners looking for a specific genre. Plus, this radio app also lets users download songs albums on the device for later playback.

Slacker Radio

Free radio app for iPhone. Slacker Radio

Slacker Radio is a truly personalized radio app. Instead of relying on a computer algorithm like the other Al-based radio streams, Slacker hires respected human DJs to program its radio stations and provides the best music, shows, talks for you. Besides, like Pandora, this radio app for iPhone also allows users to generate their own playlists or stations.

myTuner Radio

Free radio app for iPhone. myTuner Radio

myTuner Radio is a perfect iPhone/iPad radio app for those who love listening to the radio channels every now and then. Over 30,000 radio stations can be selected from this app which is simply amazing! Besides that you can also search for your favorite song by artist or album. Top 100 tracks in this radio app for iPhone makes it easy to get the most out of the app.

SiriusXM Radio

Free radio app for iPhone. SiriusXM Radio

SiriusXM Radio is one of the most well-know satellite radios. It offers 150 channels including CNN, Fox News, NBC’s TODAY, MSNBC, etc. and any kinds of radio contents including live concerts, shows, talks with DJs, real-time Band performance, and much more. Using this radio app for iPhone, you can get most of traditional SiriusXM Radio.

Part 2. How to listen to the radio on iPhone

Step 1 On you iPhone, go to Music app, tap Radio tab at the bottom of the screen to start your radio journey.

Step 2 Find a song or album and tap or use 3D touch Hit Create Station to create a station on radio.

Step 3 Also you could personalize your custom station by tapping. and tap Play Like This or Play Less Like This to listen to your custom stations.

Step 4 If you want to save a song that you hear in radio, you could play the song, tap right on the song, hit Add to Library.

Free radio app for iPhone. Use iTunes Radia App onn iPhon

If you do not want to pay money to get the radio enjoyment, you could record radio for massive ear listening with Aiseesoft Screen Recorder.

• Record radio from 8tracks, Pandora, SoundCloud, etc.
• Save the audio file in good quality.
• Record sound from microphone and computer system for playback.

This page aims at showing you the free radio app for iPhone iPad and iPod. However, even if you cannot listen to the radio online, you could also use the radio recording software to download them to your computer for offline listening.

December 13, 2017 15:19 / Updated by Louisa White to Record Audio, App

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Copyright © 2023 Aiseesoft Studio. All rights reserved.

The best radio apps for Android and iOS

While there are plenty of music streaming services these days that allow you to listen to practically any song at any time, some may long for the days of old-fashioned radio — just switch it on and turn the dial till you find something interesting. If you prefer to tune in and check out programming that is out of your control, or listen to a talk radio show like This American Life, or some local station you may never have heard of before, there are plenty of apps out there to help. Here are our favorite radio apps for Android and iPhone.

Simple Radio

Android iOS

NPR One

Android iOS

LiveXLive

Android iOS

iHeartRadio

Android iOS

FM Radio

Android Auto, letting you access radio stations with the radio app while traveling.

SiriusXM

Android iOS

Pandora

Android iOS

Editors’ Recommendations

Will Nicol is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends. He covers a variety of subjects, particularly emerging technologies, movies…

At its annual WWDC 2023 conference, Apple introduced the latest iteration of its tablet operating system.

Say hello to iPadOS 17, which is going to be out in the fall with some notable features updates in tow. For starters, a handful of iOS 17 tricks are also making their way to iPadOS 17. The Health app comes to iPad

Apple has just revealed iOS 17 at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote. This is the next major update for Apple’s iPhone hardware, which will publicly launch in the fall alongside the iPhone 15. However, those who are in Apple’s Developer Program can get ahold of the iOS 17 beta today, while those who are enrolled in Apple’s Beta Software Program can grab the beta in July.

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