Christian P. Pewitt Blogs: iHeart Puts New Spin On Pandora, Spotify w/Today's Launch Of IHeartRadio Plus and All Access Powered by Napster

Thursday, December 1, 2016

iHeart Puts New Spin On Pandora, Spotify w/Today's Launch Of IHeartRadio Plus and All Access Powered by Napster

On Wednesday, iHeartMeida launched both the Pandora-like ad free iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access, a full service music streamer. Rather than build their own music service from scratch, the broadcast radio behemoth partnered with Napster to power it's new Spotify competitor.

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iHeartMedia today launched iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access powered by Napster in beta. Available now on iOS and Android devices, the two new services will be fully available on mobile and desktop in January 2017.

Interactive Radio

Aimed at both Spotify and Pandora, the iHeart streaming services add features designed to make radio interactive "compared to all current players that simply add on demand functionality to the music collection experience." New features add the ability to instantly replay songs from the radio and then return to the live radio station in progress; and a save button that saves songs from the radio directly to a My Music playlist.

Big Win For Napster

Napster being chosen to power iHeartRadio All Access is a real win for the music streamer, which recently reported a surprising $1.6 million quarterly profit, despite user stats that lag well behind Spotify and Apple Music.

With more than 850 radio stations in 150 markets that reach over a quarter of a billion monthly listeners across the U.S, iHeartRadio is a huge marketing platform from which to launch both new services. "iHeartMedia has a unique opportunity to shine a spotlight on the tremendous value premium streaming services bring to music fans, and to the music community at large," said Mike Davis, Napster CEO.

iHeart says that 84% of iHeartRadio users do not currently subscribe to any on demand service.

"10 times more Americans listen to radio every month than use a subscription service so the debut of iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access powered by Napster is a unique opportunity to capture these non-music subscribers with an on demand service built around radio," said Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. "Whereas the LP, CD and music downloads are the ancestors of all current on demand services, the ancestor for our new on demand offerings is broadcast radio. By combining radio's popularity and reach with interactive on demand functionality, we have created the first fully differentiated streaming music service for consumers."

New Pricing & Features

iHeartRadio Plus: $4.99 a month, completely transforms live radio listening with the addition of:

Replay: The ability to instantly replay songs from the radio and then return to the live radio station in progress;
Live and custom Artist Radio stations: now equipped with a save button, allowing you to instantly save songs from the radio directly to your My Music playlist for playback any time
Search: Search and play any song from a library of millions of tracks;
Unlimited skips: When listening to custom Artist Radio stations users will no longer have a limit on the number of songs you can skip.

iHeartRadio All Access powered by Napster: $9.99 a month, combines the interactive radio functionally of iHeartRadio Plus with a complete personal music collection and library that is linked seamlessly to the radio. Additional features include:

Build a personal music libraries: Create, control and curate playlists from a library of millions of tracks;
Flexibility to listen to your music the way you want, when you want: With no playback cap and the ability to reorder, delete and sequence the playlist experience as well as manage unlimited playlists
Access offline listening: Offline listening of music and playlists without a data connection