A new partnership between TuneIn and radio broadcaster Live365 will see a significant amount of new radio stations brought to the TuneIn platform.
The partnership is part of a broader initiative called TuneIn On Air that allows independent broadcasters to reach TuneIn’s 30 million domestic audio streamers across over 200 connected devices, the companies said.
“This partnership with Live365 fits perfectly within our mission to reinvent radio for a connected world and democratize access to radio for broadcasters large and small,” Richard Stern, the chief executive of TuneIn, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We believe great conversations are driven by the power of the human voice and we know our listeners rely on us to stay connected to the issues that matter to them most via our content catalog.”
Both TuneIn and Live365 have been around in the streaming audio space for quite some time, with Live365 launching as an online platform for independent broadcasters in the late 1990s. TuneIn, formerly known as RadioTime, rolled out its public radio directory shortly after Live365 started.
Live365 radio broadcasters have been able to list their streams on TuneIn for years, but the TuneIn On Air partnership will offer a direct and frictionless way for small online radio operators to integrate their streams with TuneIn’s various apps and connected products.
“We’re excited to strike up this historic distribution deal with TuneIn to offer our Live365 Broadcaster Community access to TuneIn On Air’s unparalleled distribution reach,” Jon Stephenson, Live365’s chief executive, said on Wednesday. “As internet radio pioneers, this is an extraordinary opportunity to combine forces and allow broadcasters to utilize Live365’s easy-to-use tools and licensing coverage while reaching TuneIn’s millions of listeners. We’re proud to offer this to our community as we focus on expanding our distribution offering.”
The partnership builds on recent growth initiatives at TuneIn, which has seen the radio platform ink deals with major sports brands and content producers that greatly expands the amount of content available to its tens of millions of streaming audio customers.
Earlier this year, TuneIn announced it was bringing live play-by-play coverage of Major League Baseball games to domestic streamers, an announcement that was followed by plans to offer the same type of coverage for Major League Soccer matches.
Last month, TuneIn said it had inked a deal with the National Football League to provide international streamers with live access to audio simulcasts of pre-season and regular season football games. It also announced a separate deal with production company Bleav to distribute sports-related podcasts through linear streams.
TuneIn’s radio streams and podcasts are available within the free TuneIn app and can also be accessed on a number of third-party platforms, including smart speakers powered by the Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. The company also powers live audio streams found on Apple Music, Sonos and Bose SoundTouch.
