Two Apps, TuneIn and iHeart Radio, Put Radio Online

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Monday, August 06, 2012

Two Apps, TuneIn and iHeart Radio, Put Radio Online

By BEN SISARIO

For the radio industry, there may be no better symbol for the challenges of adapting to the digital age than two candy-colored mobile apps.

The apps, iHeartRadio and TuneIn, are aggregators — conduits for thousands of online radio streams. With a few taps on a smartphone, a listener can dart among a pop station in New York, gospel in Atlanta and talk almost anywhere.

Both have quickly amassed big audiences. TuneIn, which offers 70,000 streams from around the world, has more than 30 million monthly users. IHeartRadio, owned by the broadcasting giant Clear Channel Communications, has been downloaded 95 million times and has attracted more than 12 million registered users.

For broadcasters, these aggregators can help reach audiences in the growing but increasingly fragmented world of online radio, which can mean anything from a customized playlist on Pandora or Spotify to an iTunes stream.

“Our mission is about getting our content to as wide an audience as possible,” said Anil Dewan, the director of interactive media at KCRW, a public station in Santa Monica, Calif., whose digital outlets include TuneIn, iHeartRadio, iTunes, Spotify and an app of its own.

At the same time, many broadcasters say they worry about the rising costs of online royalties; the plans of the companies behind the apps; and the possibility of being lost within the aggregators, like needles in enormous digital haystacks.

Both aggregators let users find stations by typing a city, genre or station name into their search bars. TuneIn also points listeners to any station currently playing a given artist or song; iHeartRadio has an extensive custom-radio function, modeled after Pandora.

But as businesses they represent two poles of media. TuneIn, in Palo Alto, Calif., which started as a simple directory, transformed itself into an app purveyor two years ago, with streams that include not only radio and podcasts, but also emergency scanner signals.

Cloud Computing to Rewrite Corporate Business Models

IBM Study: Cloud Computing to Rewrite Corporate Business Models

Percentage of companies innovating with cloud expected to double by 2015

Tab navigation

• News release
• Related XML feeds

• Contact(s) information
• Related resources

LAS VEGAS - 06 Mar 2012: The number of enterprises turning to cloud computing to revamp existing business models will more than double in the next three years, as business leaders move to capitalize on the rapid availability of data and the growing popularity of social media, according to a new study released today by IBM (NYSE: IBM). Businesses that embrace the transformative power of cloud will have a significant advantage in the race to introduce new products and services and capture new markets and revenue streams. 

To better understand the shift in how organizations use cloud today and how they plan to employ it in the future IBM, in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit, surveyed more than 500 business and technology executives worldwide. The findings were compiled in a new study, titled "The Power of Cloud: Driving business model innovation." 

“Companies are starting to understand -- cloud isn’t just about gaining efficiencies and cost savings; it’s about driving the kind of fundamental innovation that provides lasting marketplace advantage,” said Saul Berman, IBM global strategy consulting leader and co-author of the study.  

IBM's Saul Berman discusses top factors influencing cloud's growing role as business model enabler

Changing Motivations for Cloud Adoption  

According to the study, as they strive to better meet customers' needs and drive future growth, business leaders will increasingly tap cloud to develop new business models that can exploit the capabilities resulting from these digital trends. While 16 percent of the executives surveyed indicate they are already using cloud capabilities for sweeping innovation, such as entering new lines of business or reshaping an existing industry, by 2015, 35 percent intend to use it to transform their business models.  

While a little more than half of the respondents indicated "improving organizational efficiency" as a top business challenge today, only 31 percent anticipate it will be a top challenge in three years. Instead the study indicates that their focus is shifting to growth and competitive initiatives in the future. The objectives cited by survey respondents for adopting cloud are in line with these business goals, indicating that business needs will soon rival IT motivations for cloud adoption: 

·    62  percent of survey respondents said increased collaboration with external partners is a key objective for adopting cloud;  

·    57 percent cited competitive cost advantages through vertical integration as a major motivation; and  

·    56 percent pointed to opening new delivery channels and markets as an important objective. 

Examples cited in the report showcasing how cloud is being tapped to drive new revenue streams and enhance business models include an online marketplace for handmade goods that has taken advantage of cloud’s cost flexibility to gain access to more powerful analytics online. The company is able to cost-effectively analyze data from the approximately one billion monthly views of its Web site and use the information to create product recommendations, providing it with access to tools and computing power that might typically only be affordable for larger retailers.  

The study also cites an online health information network that enables the exchange of health information and transactions among healthcare providers, employers, payers, practitioners, third-party administrators and patients in India. By connecting more than 1,100 hospitals and 10,000 doctors, cloud computing’s capabilities are facilitating better collaboration and information sharing -- helping the network to pursue a more collaborative business model and deliver improved care at a low cost. 

The study’s authors point to cloud's capabilities to mask complexity and enable user-defined experiences, as well as its overall scalability and cost flexibility as key reasons companies are planning to move it into front office operations in the near future.    

"Cloud has the power to open doors to more efficient, responsive and innovative ways of doing business, and we believe the companies that will come out on top will be the ones that find ways to leverage it as a key point of differentiation in driving business value,” Berman said. “Whether they choose to tap cloud to optimize, innovate or even disrupt their business models, they need to start working on it now."   

For more information on the study, visit: www.ibm.com/gbs/powerofcloud. 

For more information on IBM, visit www.ibm.com