NPR One

http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/

by antr • 12 years ago

446 177 12 years ago

rglover• 12 years ago

Super cool. Only thing, though, is that they should be charging for this. Seeing as how NPR stations rely on listener donations, this seems like a missed opportunity to earn some extra revenue and bolster the budget for stations.

TwiztidK• 12 years ago

I have a strong feeling that they will charge for it eventually. Maybe the app will ask them to donate as they use it?

twoodfin• 12 years ago

I don't know if their funding/production model is flexible enough to allow them to do it, but it seems like some great opportunities for IAP here.

For example, if Planet Money produced a monthly bonus episode for, say, $5, I know I wouldn't think twice before tapping "Buy".

gee_totes2• 12 years ago

I have a strong feeling that when your local station's pledge drive begins, the app will use your location data to generate notifications about donating, which you'll be able to do through the app.

At least, that's how I would do it. NPR is missing out on a big donation opportunity by not taking advantage of an app store's built-in in-app purchase/donation infrastructure.

tormeh2• 12 years ago

But it's NPR... It's government-owned, right? A public broadcaster? Can they legally charge for anything?

MBCook2• 12 years ago

They're not government owned. They're get a subsidy through the appropriate government agency (don't remember the name at the moment) but it's only about 10% of their budget and they are free to act however they wish.

NPR is not state media. That would be Voice of America, which is not allowed to broadcast in the US.

gee_totes2• 12 years ago

No, it's not government-owned.

"According to the 2009 financial statement, about 50% of NPR revenues come from the fees it charges member stations for programming and distribution charges."[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npr#Funding

theg22• 12 years ago

They are not government owned. They take grants but they are prohibited from taking money directly. A large part of their income comes from member stations who pay for access to shows, content, and support.

taude• 12 years ago

I don't actually think the government owns it. The government provides some of it's funding (not all, though, which is why there's always a fund-raising drive?).

*edit - now seeing all the answers below

gerbal• 12 years ago

NPR is not a public broadcaster in the sense of other nation's public broadcasters.

It was founded, initially, with funding from congress, as an independent, non-profit broadcaster. Currently, NPR receives very little to no funding from the Government. Something like 2% of NPR's funding comes from state, local, and national government. Though individual stations may receive radically varying amounts of government funding.

It is Public in the sense that it serves the public interest and is funded by listeners.

mesh• 12 years ago

fyi, NPR is is publicly and privately funded, but is not owned by the government.

There is a good article here on its status:

http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/2001/011228.html

"Legally speaking, NPR is a private, not-for-profit corporation chartered by the District of Columbia and qualified by the Internal Revenue Service as a "501(c)(3)" organization exempt from taxation. "

lukeschlather• 12 years ago

This isn't really any different from the streaming player on npr.org. It's got a slightly fancier subscription mechanism. At the end of the day, it's not that useful because I can't rely on my phone's 4G to remain connected without buffering while listening to an hour long news program on a trip.

What would be worth charging money for is an app that could cache a configurable number of hours of new curated content when connected to wifi. Even so, that's not really any different from podcasts.

I feel like the world is still very much in a transitional state with regards to how we think about apps. NPR offers its stuff over the air for free, but you write some code to do the same thing with a computer, and suddenly people are saying it should cost money.

paulito• 12 years ago

New York's public radio station, WNYC, recently revamped its app to incorporate this feature, which I agree is very useful:

http://www.wnyc.org/mobile/

A lot of the available content categories aren't specific to New York, so it might be worth checking out regardless of where you live.

eddieroger• 12 years ago

I imagine most of the local fees go to very tactical things like keeping the transmitter on, which is non-trivial. Not that streaming should exclude local affiliates from funding, but it should be the local channel's responsibility to handle the cost of things it can't share (transmitters, office space, staff, etc), and share or get money for content and such which it can share back.

bullfight2• 12 years ago

When I started listening, the first thing it did was play a bump for my local station, I am really hoping this fully incorporates local content.

TylerE• 12 years ago

There actually isn't any such thing as an "NPR Station". NPR is not a broadcaster. They are a content-producer. There are stations that are NPR members that carry lots of NPR content, but they are free to also carry local content they produce, content they license from other syndicates (e.g. PRI, American Public Media, PRX)

johnnymonster2• 12 years ago

but you are able to donate. The app actually tells you how to donate to your localized station by clicking on the "How to Donate" link in the menu area.

garretruh• 12 years ago

At least during the beta, a "Donate" segment would occasionally be interspersed between programs/segments; the app displayed a button that linked you to the start of their online donation process.

hodgesmr2• 12 years ago

Xbox One.

Pandora One.

Ubuntu One.

NPR One.

Stop it!

imcn• 12 years ago

Nexus One. OnePlus One. LG Optimus One. HTC One. Even Apple's got One!

freehunter• 12 years ago

What One does Apple have? I searched it but only got an employment agency with no relationship to the computer company.

spindritf• 12 years ago

Ubuntu One.

They stopped this one.

x1798DE3• 12 years ago

I don't understand why this needs to be an app. I listen to many things that aren't NPR, and I don't want to switch between BeyondPod and NPR One just to get some sort of curated list. This reminds me of a few years ago where a bunch of podcasts were offering personalized apps that just downloaded the archives and maybe some extra content. I might have paid for the extra content, but I didn't need an app on my phone for every podcast I listen to.

Assuming the killer feature here is that it's curated or somehow personalized, and not just something that plays all NPR shows (the page is a bit vague), it seems like you could replace this with a service that generates personalized RSS feeds on the fly, server-side. That way it can integrate directly into your own podcast-listening workflow, where you might have plugins or some specific setup that you prefer to use.

netcan2• 12 years ago

Podcasts (especially on android) is still remarkably broken for most people. I have installed an app and subscribed to several podcasts for a number of people who are below average in their tech literacy. They all fail at being able to consistently manage the app and get the content they want.

Finding and subscribing to a new podcast, even if they know which one they want and can get to the website is an almost 100% fail rate.

Even for me, discovery is broken. I'm sure there is interesting stuff out there that I can't find.

In any case, I think that between an app that people know to install and and click on an RSS feed that they have no idea what to do with, the app is the better choice.

jclos• 12 years ago

It's a bit offtopic but have you tried PocketCasts? I have been using it extensively on Android and recommended it to many tech-illiterate (the kind of people who think facebooking makes them computer literate) friends with relatively good success.

x1798DE3• 12 years ago

I suppose you could offer an app in addition to an RSS feed, but honestly I've never encountered someone who didn't know how to download a podcast.

If they are primarily worried about people having trouble downloading podcasts for whatever reason, it seems like they could have saved themselves a lot of work by just contacting some of the biggest podcast apps on the market (BeyondPod I think is the biggest) about making it easy to subscribe to this particular feed. They could make a custom-built plugin that just installs the feed, they could potentially license a special distribution of the app that has the feed pre-installed.

Fragmentation of the audio listening market is really not justified and is not really going to help anything.

jimmyswimmy• 12 years ago

Admitttedly I'm a pretty advanced user, but have you tried Antennapod (available, at least, on f-droid)? It is pretty easy to use and does a lot of auto downloading for you. Once you add the stream it just works pretty well.

gress3• 12 years ago

The alternative you suggest would be better for a tiny number of highly sophisticated users, and a lot worse for most people.

Also, I see no reason both shouldn't exist. Why not make the thing you want?

javaun7• 12 years ago

Both can. Every service that runs under the hood (recommenders, raters, story fetching, login, etc.) is an agnostic API that can be used elsewhere. Some of the auto manufacturers and TV apps were already using a scaled down version, albeit without all the features and services of NPR One

MBCook2• 12 years ago

Perhaps you can personalize it further than just by show. I've often wished there was an easy way to subscribe to Nina Totenberg's legal reports. I enjoy them, but I don't want to subscribe to all of All Things Considered to make sure I don't miss them.

x1798DE3• 12 years ago

Well that was my point. I was assuming you can do some sort of curated-feature situation. Whatever customization the app offers, the output is basically just a list of NPR episodes and links to a server hosting them. If you wrote a server-side application that generates custom RSS feeds per-user, managed using a web panel (or a plugin for existing podcast clients), you'd essentially get the same feature set, but it would be compatible with your preferred audio backend.

danielweber2• 12 years ago

Scroll down broken here. First I have to click on the page to get scrolling to work. Then as I use the space bar to scroll down, the dots change but often the text does not.

cake• 12 years ago

Broken for me too on the second dot, I can't scroll more and have to click on a dot.

I really dislike this new "Powerpoint slide" presentation trend.

bduerst• 12 years ago

Are you using NoScript or some other javascript killer?

Usually these are driven by some custom js.

danielweber2• 12 years ago

Not on this machine. Plain Google Chrome on Windows.

dctoedt• 12 years ago

If this catches on, it might disintermediate (EDIT: or accelerate the existing disintermediation of) the local public radio stations, which will then lose donations, which will then be less able to do local reporting. (Of course I'm not sure our Houston public radio station does all that much local reporting to start with.)

msluyter• 12 years ago

I think this has happened in part already. Although I try to listen to my local station (KUT) via their app, I also use the NPR app to time shift programs like All Things Considered that I tend to otherwise miss. (If you miss a program by an hour or so, the NPR app won't let you listen to a program that's within some window of its broadcast time, but you can listen to it any public radio station currently broadcasting it.)

I also listen to shows that aren't carried locally, and of course, time listening through the NPR app is time not spent listening to KUT directly (which I probably would do if there weren't alternatives, because I'm pretty much an NPR junkie).

colanderman• 12 years ago

Perhaps with the local content it promises to play, it will play local pledge drives?

mschaef• 12 years ago

I think you're on to something. When our local public radio stations start their pledge drives, I almost immediately switch over to the podcasts for the duration. There's more latency in the stories, but you also miss the continual pledge advertising.

27182818284• 12 years ago

If this catches on, it might disintermediate the local public radio stations,

Just glancing at the app, I don't think there is anything here that you couldn't currently do in the NPR app ecosystem. For example there is already an NPR app that lets you choose radio stations or just programs from around the world and a lot of local stations built their own, independent app (though in my experience those are lower quality)

javaun7• 12 years ago

Concerns around disintermediation and what they stations call "bypass" ( NPR delivering audio direct to consumers and bypassing terrestrial FM) is what prevented this from launching earlier, not the tech or UX concerns. They had to launch with a plurality of stations, localizations was required, and they had to work donations into the mix. Donations is particularly challenging since there is no one donation form (every station is independent, each has their own form/account, and no one would agree to a central account powered by, say Stripe or whatever). They couldn't launch an MVP like Swell, they had to go live with way more. That said, public radio has its strengths, one of which is that they own their content.

mikeash4• 12 years ago

Although they're separate entities, they seem to understand that they're all in it together, and cooperate. If this results in a drop in donations, I imagine they'll add in-app donations and pledge drive info and whatever else would be appropriate, directed towards your local station.

bullfight2• 12 years ago

This app seems to reverse the trend of separating NPR from local content as does the regular NPR app. When I use the regular NPR app I either listen to the local stream, or more commonly, grab all the newest segments from Morning Edition or All Things Considered, throw them in a playlist, and listen. In this way I miss all the local content.

This new app seamlessly mixes in content from your local station and features the local content prominently.

I think they have done a fantastic job here and are working hard to do good by their local stations.

grrrando• 12 years ago

Anyone else find the concept a little weird? NPR is already like this in many ways (heavily left-leaning) so this argument is already somewhat moot, but: hearing news stories tailored just for me sounds ignorant. News shouldn't be a thing which I am allowed to filter based on my biases.

gress3• 12 years ago

Whose biases should your news be filtered by?

rootbear• 12 years ago

I'll have to see how this actually works, but it's not clear that the news itself will be tailored to the listener. For example, I might pick "Science News" and "Arts News" but not "Sports News" and I don't see that as putting myself in an echo chamber. If the categories were "News for Democrats" and "News for Social Conservatives", then that might be a concern. Also, NPR is more than just news. I regularly listen to NPR programming that isn't entirely aligned with my own world views.

blueplanet• 12 years ago

I think they mean tailoring in two ways:

1. Play stories local to where you live. 2. A lot of shows on NPR aren't straight news, so it'll remember which shows you particularly enjoy.

cantankerous• 12 years ago

NPR is loaded with programming that isn't just news-related. This includes musical programming, comedy, special interest programs, and topical shows. Listeners to NPR already know this. They filter what they want to hear by turning the radio on and off.

NPR's news segments are top notch journalism. You'd be hard-pressed to find another media institution as large as NPR in the US that does nearly as good of a job in my opinion.

tomjen32• 12 years ago

You already filter your news by what newspaper you buy (or more correctly read online) and which stories you read in it. This is no different.

declan• 12 years ago

News shouldn't be a thing which I am allowed to filter based on my biases.

I'd say the opposite: News shouldn't be a thing where other people can tell me what I am "allowed" to read or not.

I left my job at CNET/CBS earlier this year to found a bay area startup -- http://recent.io/ -- with a news recommendation engine and accompanying Android/iOS apps. You can choose to read personalized "Recommended for me" articles, or certain topics, or top news articles, etc. The Recommended category is unique to you; the other categories are common to everyone.

I've shipped the alpha to a few testers, and you're welcome to sign up for the beta. After using it for a bit, you might have a different opinion about whether you should be "allowed" to select what you're interested in, or delegate that in part to a recommendation engine.

minivan• 12 years ago

Cool, hopefully it will replace the All Songs Considered audio stream (which is great).

Side note: Is it just me, or this "scroll to reveal stuff in steps" is a bit frustrating? It seems to be used more and more often and I am sometimes puzzled by the fact that I'm missing the scrolling step. I try scrolling and get either too far (which shows half an image coming from above) or don't get anywhere (which makes me scroll more and skip steps). Here's an example: http://www.spendeeapp.com/

Am I doing something wrong?

stronglikedan2• 12 years ago

It's not just you. It's an annoying trend. Perhaps it's good for phones and tablets (that's arguable), but I don't think it's good for mouse input. At least this landing page (NPR) has optional buttons on the right side, unlike most pages I've seen like this (Spendee). It's turning "mobile first" into "mobile only", and I am being dragged kicking and screaming into it.

mbesto• 12 years ago

As always, the general rule of the desktop is "don't break my browser functionality". Browser functionality = scroll bar, back/forward button, refresh, bookmark, etc.

unclebucknasty2• 12 years ago

It's turning "mobile first" into "mobile only"

Yeah, it is definitely whacked for desktops, and I know it's supposed to be somehow good for mobile, but I don't get that either. What's the theory behind it improving the mobile experience? Is it supposed to save bandwidth or something? Because I'm not sure if it's loading the content on scroll or preloading all and merely animating on scroll.

Either way, bandwidth is becoming less of a problem, so I can't see why we'd be launching new design trends to address it.

pdabbadabba• 12 years ago

I don't blame people for experimenting with new ways of visualizing the "scrolling" mechanic. (Though, it is so widely done these days that I can hardly give NPR One credit for "experimenting" in this particular case.) I think it's fun to see people testing new ways to interact.

But if you do that, it had better be well implemented -- and that is clearly where this falls short. User input translates into on-screen behavior inconsistently, arrow keys are basically broken. When you're trying to replace something so basic as scrolling, this is an interesting case study in just how frustrated users will get with even small frustrations. I've found that even the (now) more typical load-on-demand pages drive me nuts when there's no more than a momentary hitch in the scrolling to load more content. Though maybe I'm just easily bothered by such things.

endgame2• 12 years ago

Not only that, but it manages to break the spacebar as a scrolling tool. I'm getting really sick of webapps that are hijacking or breaking keyboard shortcuts!

samskeller• 12 years ago

Couldn't agree more about the scrolling. It's trying too hard to be fancy and ends up just being frustrating and hard to use

bluthru• 12 years ago

Cranking an animation... this doesn't feel like the future.

ghshephard• 12 years ago

It's not you - The page is broken - the scrolling is completely screwed up on that page.

sanketdasgupta• 12 years ago

Its just not smooth enough.

na85• 12 years ago

It's not you. Scrolling without visual feedback makes the user think they've hit the bottom of the page.

Terrible design.

tombrossman• 12 years ago

Replace the All Songs Considered stream? I sure hope not!

The stream is great and I've been an ASC listener since it was a semi-regular podcast I would download. Now I have it running in Radio Tray on my desktop most days, and I don't want something interactive.

The primary attractions for me are 1) It works overseas (I'm in Europe) 2) It is consumed passively, and 3) The curation of the music stream is superb. You can even email Bob feedback on songs and he writes you back. I think it's one of the coolest and most enjoyable things on the Internet.

I'm not against a new interactive app for people to use on their mobiles, but this in now way replaces the stream for me.

electic• 12 years ago

It isn't you. It is by fair the most annoying thing ever. I usually close sites right away that do this because it tends to be slow, jerky, and overall frustrating. The only reason I kept putting up with it is because it is NPR.

tdicola• 12 years ago

Yeah this scrolling seemed kind of bad to me, I got halfway down and had to use a lot of force to proceed. I'm looking forward to this gimmick going away.

Aloha• 12 years ago

I didnt realize there was more at first, till I read the comments.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

Yeah, the scroll reveal is this year's Pinterest Layout. Don't worry, it'll be some other bandwagon in 12 months.

pimlottc• 12 years ago

The behavior is even more miserable if you try to navigate via keyboard pageup/pagedown. Whole sections of content are liable to be skipped, and when they aren't, you often land in an odd intermediate frame that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Page designers need to consider that navigation is not always continuous.

smsm422• 12 years ago

Yes, this is annoying to me too. When you scroll that NPR site, it starts with normal scrolling and then turns into a strange mode where your scrolling intermittently does apparently nothing or changes the whole page or even shows horizontal scrolling of part of the screen. This is not how scroll is meant to work and it goes against all patterns trained for decades. It also detracts from usability as now I am confined to the order and flow that designers want, not that I want, PageUp/PageDown works weird, quick skimming is impossible, etc. Reminds me of some of Apple products - looks nice, works great if you are exactly the use case they designed for, very frustrating or useless if you want to do something the designers did not foresee.

keerthiko• 12 years ago

The npr page for some reason becomes actually extremely straightforward and normal if your browser is really narrow (discovered when using my portrait monitor).

It just makes all the images stuck in place and scrolls like a normal fucking webpage. I put it on my standard widescreen one, and yeah, pg-up/pg-dn, up/dn just completely destroyed the page.

ww520• 12 years ago

Also the up/down arrow keys don't work beyond the first screen, very annoying.

arcticfox• 12 years ago

I was hoping that I could say: "Yes, I like Radiolab" and "No, I don't like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me", but that doesn't seem to be a feature. This would be perfect if they added it!

ejfox2• 12 years ago

This is a feature of Swell: http://www.swell.am/

jonesetc• 12 years ago

I thought the same thing, but that's when I would say we're probably all better off just using a podcast.

http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php

jim-greer2• 12 years ago

Hopefully they'll factor in what you skip and mark as "interesting"...

mikeleung• 12 years ago

check out the wnyc app (the local station in NY) it provides a feature to pick topics you like

tomjen32• 12 years ago

Beware if you use google or facebook to login to it (what the fuck do you need to login in the first place) it requires the right to get your friends lists and to post content on your behalf.

hodgesmr2• 12 years ago

You log in to "thumbs up" content to get a personalized stream.

geekam• 12 years ago

You can use NPR login.

igonvalue• 12 years ago

I tried using Google login, and it wouldn't proceed unless I created a Google Plus profile.

ruytlm• 12 years ago

This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app?

This is the biggest problem with audio apps these days - you get everyone trying to make a similar thing, and because they're all competing they all try and lock each other out of their own products.

What would be so much better is a content-agnostic platform, that'll let you play whatever the hell you want - whether it's music, talk radio, podcasts, whatever.

Seriously - why does everyone assume that if I want to listen to e.g. NPR, I only want to listen to NPR?

joekrill• 12 years ago

I agree totally. The problem is, I haven't been able to find one single content-agnostic app that does any of this very well. Either it's iPhone only. Or Android only. Or iPhone and Android but no web app. Or it doesn't sync my last listening position, or sometimes even what I've listened to at all. Or any other number of very basic things I'd expect an app like this to have.

myko• 12 years ago

Or iPhone and Android but no web app

Pocket Casts is awesome but there have been times when I really wanted a web version. Lately though I use Chromecast from the app when I'd normally want the PC to play the track.

jessriedel• 12 years ago

I agree with the annoyance of everyone and their mother wanting their own app, but NPR seems like a big enough piece of a lot of folks entertainment/news lives that it makes sense. (I say this as someone who never listens to NPR.)

The question is whether the product is used frequently enough and can actually make use of a custom interface, compared to whether a more generic app would actually provide value. If I would use the generic app to listen to NPR 95% of the time, then it probably makes more sense to dedicate the app to NPR and just use a web browser for the other 5%.

Reversing XKCD, it's probably better to think of apps as slightly heavy and custom websites. There's really not much loss in having lots more apps so long as they're lighweight. Throw them all into a folder on your homescreen.

http://xkcd.com/1367/

javaun7• 12 years ago

They have to play all sides. Replacing FM listening is like replacing oil: there's no one platform that big. Half of listening occurs in cars, and as the fleet turns over to TCP/IP listening over the next decade, NPR has to be there wherever. There will be branded apps, they will serve third-party apps and car specific apps, etc. Another audio provider (i.e. Pandora) could license NPR content and have access to the same APIs. I am not suggesting this is in the works, just a pure hypothetical argument. I haven't worked there since February but I did work on APIs and worked on this listening app a few years ago.

javaun7• 12 years ago

I worked on this at NPR back it when it was called the Infinite Player. We'd envisioned NPR branded apps as well as integrations into other platforms (mobile, connected cars) and potentially other apps. We architected the underlying APIs with this in mind, so what you seek will probably happen at some point. At launch though, NPR wanted the pop of a branded offering, and I think they've got it.

KC8ZKF• 12 years ago

Podcasts are a content-agnostic platform. They've been around for a while, the software is easy to use, they're easy to find. NPR, NYT, ESPN and many others have all had podcasts for quite a while.

If you want live radio, you can stream from mobile Safari. I'm not sure about others. Music, of course, has always been available. Since before smart phones, even.

In short, you don't need these apps any more than most other apps.

sehrope• 12 years ago

This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app?

I can't comment on this new app yet but I'm a near daily user of the regular NPR app (which I think is officially called "NPR news"). It's way better than any generic radio app I've tried.

Besides listening to the individual local stations, you can also get the latest news (the ~4-minute hourly blurb), can create playlists of entire shows (without the interludes, i.e. just the content), and built-in news articles (for reading, not listening). I've even used the local NPR station finder to help me tune an analog radio when in a new city where I'm not familiar with the local stations.

It'd take quite a bit of agreement on content licensing and data formats to have anything like that be as usable as the NPR app across multiple content providers.

Seriously - why does everyone assume that if I want to listen to e.g. NPR, I only want to listen to NPR?

Well some of us do :D

subpixel• 12 years ago

I agree with your sentiment when it comes to e-commerce and print publishing, but for radio, I'm already a big app-consumer.

Why? So I can escape the soul-crushing drudgery of Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion. They're good shows, but they're essentially the same show, repeated thousands of times. And no matter where I am, they seem to be what's on the local NPR station.

So I already have apps (or streams in the Radium app) for the CBC, BBC, Deutsche Welle, etc. If this new NPR app lets me listen without needing to constantly fiddle with my phone and select stories, I'll use it a lot.

gdilla• 12 years ago

The issue is letting your brand be accessible on some third party's (often) sub par app/platform, where you don't get access to data (often) and have little to no control on the UX. The tradeoff is app fatigue and a cluttered app store. It's hard to remember what app does what and many sit on your device rarely used since they become forgotten.

tomphoolery• 12 years ago

Sometimes it's helpful. For example, I do listen to a bunch of podcasts and I follow some DJs on Soundcloud. But every once in a while, there's just NOTHING good being posted. So it's good to have a fallback to a radio station of some kind, one that I can just open the app, hit the "big triangle", and just get music immediately. That instant gratification is the real value of the app. I have Rinse.FM's app for this purpose.

Incidentally, I feel like as smartphones become more ubiquitous and embedded into the rest of our lives, we'll start to see apps that have a much more simple purpose. After all, since Siri isn't programmable by app developers, the fastest way to listen to NPR is now downloading the app, holding your home button, and saying "Open NPR One". Perhaps the app could be designed so that it immediately begins streaming when you open it, that way you can just tell your phone something and suddenly you're listening to the radio.

All of this audio streaming is on a consistent platform, it's mostly Icecast or SHOUTcast servers doing the actual streaming. Theoretically, one could build a directory of radio stations like Nullsoft did with SHOUTcast, but the main issue is the platform has never been created by a company whose SOLE PURPOSE is to index and catalog current radio stations. Until we get that, I don't think you're gonna see a platform improvement any time soon.

adrusi• 12 years ago

I think what ruytlm meant was why is NPR One not delivered as just an internet radio stream that any Shoutcast client can connect to. There's a good reason of course: Shoutcast's protocol doesn't allow for an kind of user input, which prevents NPR One from implementing any kind of voting system so that it can curate its selection. Such functionality would be useful for traditional internet radio stations. Many stations take feedback about the current song on their main site, take requests, etc. and it would be great if the Shoutcast protocol allowed stations to display some kind of form to provide interactivity.

skywhopper• 12 years ago

I'm not sure I understand your critique. It appears NPR has come up with an interesting approach to allowing discovery of content it has access to in the form of this app, but they understandably aren't planning to get into the business of providing access to all audio content in the world via their app. But you are not restricted to using the NPR app to listen to NPR. Their content is also available in numerous other ways, including podcasts and streaming radio, as well as traditional local radio affiliates. So what exactly is your complaint?

rhizome• 12 years ago

but they understandably aren't planning to get into the business of providing access to all audio content in the world via their app

Yeah, they aren't iheartradio or anything.

rsync3• 12 years ago

"This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app?"

Also, why do all these damned apps have ridiculous access requirements ? In recent weeks I have been dismayed to find that HBO Go and Sonos apps both require access to all of my media files (android app) in order to be installed.

I'll bet that's not uncommon. Presumably it's just lazy development by people that don't know the finer points of the SDKs, etc., but it's pretty ridiculous what a lot of these apps (that, as the parent points out, aren't really necessary anyway[1]) require.

[1] HBO Go does not need to be an app, as demonstrated by the fact that I use it in my browser (OSX) every day.

kevincrane• 12 years ago

I mean, given Sonos streams your media, that one should probably be pretty obvious why it wants to access your media...

vorporeal• 12 years ago

This seems to be due to Google's new grouping of permissions for Android apps. The permission group you're referring to is described as "Uses one or more of: files on the device such as images, videos, or audio, the device's external storage". That means that if the app wants to use some of its own data which is located on external storage (which is pretty common), you're also giving it permission to access your media files on the device, because Google thinks (for some incomprehensible reason) that these are similar permissions and grouping them makes it easier for users to understand what's going on.

amitparikh• 12 years ago

Because content creators are trying to maximize the revenue generated from that content.

We can't fault a company (or non-profit organization for that matter) for following their optimal strategy, can we? Sure it's an annoyance to the end-user because it fragments the market, but that's where there's an opportunity for a disruption!

If everything were on iTunes, would that make you happy? It's clear to me that the cut that Apple is taking (for the benefit of inclusion on their "content-agnostic platform") is something that is untenable for NPR and many other similar content producers out there.

arrrg• 12 years ago

Podcasts exist and NPR uses that format liberally. You can pick from several excellent podcast apps and access a lot of NPR’s content that way.

NPR also has an excellent website where you can listen to their content on mobile devices.

This app is a third way to access their content. It doesn’t make sense for everyone (if someone only listens to one NPR show – for example Planet Money – and also a lot of other, similar audio content from other sources I would recommend getting a podcast app they like; if someone only occasionally listens to NPR – for example when someone recommends them something specific – I would recommend just visiting the website), but it can make sense for certain people.

So no, NPR very much does not assume that you only want to listen to NPR. That’s a completely incorrect assumption on your part.

If you want everything get a podcast app. NPR has nothing against podcasts and you can get the right feeds from them. If NPR would want to discontinue offering podcast feeds you would have a point … but as it stands right now you just sound incoherent and uninformed.

Edit: Ok, there are several excellent podcast apps on iOS. No idea about Android, could be royally broken there, but I don’t really care. That platform is broken, anyway. More broken than iOS at least. Podcast apps on iOS are a healthy category with lots of competition and radically different approaches – so there should be an at least acceptable app for everyone.

tsunamifury• 12 years ago

Because almost anyone who eventually "owns the platform", eventually squeezes the content producers out of all the profit.

Why would I cooperate with a central platform, when once its achieves market dominance, it uses that position to dictate my profit margins?

JetSpiegel2• 12 years ago

If it's a standard nobody "owns" the plaform.

Nobody "owns" RSS for example.

dasil003• 12 years ago

Everyone needs to have an app because if you don't have an app today you are not a digital brand. I'm a web developer so I'd love for responsive design to be enough, but frankly it's not. Users demand apps, and the most passionate NPR fans will eat this thing up (it's actually looks like an interesting app that brings more to the table than 99% of apps so good on them).

Is this stopping you from getting NPR content in a regular podcatcher? Do they have an annoying "app-wall" forcing you to install the app when you visit npr.org on a mobile device? No? Then I don't see what the problem is.

fred_durst2• 12 years ago

Because there's only so many icons on your home screen and everyone wants as many of those as they can get.

pbreit3• 12 years ago

Agreed. Swell (apparently to be acquired by Apple) and Antenna Radio are delivering a similar experience but without the NPR limitation.

thekevan• 12 years ago

No browser version?

rugbydev3• 12 years ago

Yes, http://one.npr.org

mikeash4• 12 years ago

I love the idea. I listen to NPR a fair amount but it's always a bit hit or miss as to whether I'll catch it at an interesting moment, since my listening is basically "whenever I happen to be in the car, or possibly out for a walk where I don't want to enjoy quietude." I work around it to an extent with podcasts of shows I like, but that works poorly for anything related to news.

CapitalistCartr• 12 years ago

Every corporate/large organization Web site wants me to use their app. I already have an app! It's the Web browser. It already plays video and audio.

giarc2• 12 years ago

Can a mobile browser continue to play audio when your phone is in your pocket? For example, YouTube stops playing when I put my iPhone to sleep.

dublinben2• 12 years ago

That's a function of Youtube primarily delivering video content. A website designed to deliver audio content (e.g. Soundcloud) can keep playing just fine with the screen off.

fsck--off• 12 years ago

Yes, it can. Start the video and put the iPhone to sleep. When you wake the iPhone up a moment later the music controls on the lock screen allow you to resume playing the audio. You can then turn the screen off and the audio will still play.

fred_durst2• 12 years ago

I do it all the time, so yes.

m1117• 12 years ago

I really like using AGOGO that includes NPR too

jonmagic• 12 years ago

Why does the app need microphone access? I missed the blurb when you first open the app and can't seem to figure out how to replay it now.

rsync3• 12 years ago

The app does not need microphone access. You know it, I know it, NPR knows it.

johnnymonster2• 12 years ago

It has xapp ad integration, which requires microphone access.

theg22• 12 years ago

Certain ads will allow you to interact with them via your microphone for hands free driving or whatever. It's new and you'll probably start seeing it more in other apps but this is the first time I've seen it in an app.

rsync3• 12 years ago

To all current and future app developers using microphone-ad-interaction: die in a fire.

techpeace• 12 years ago

Rather than some aimless techie kvetching, I'd just like to pass along a hearty congrats to the folks who made this happen. Great work, and I'm excited to use it!

mmanfrin• 12 years ago

I really appreciate NPR. They truly try to embetter their offerings. It's nice that we have a source of news that is not beholden to advertisers or corporate interests (although the number of 'This content was made possible by donations from...' I hear at the end of the larger shows is a bit worrying).

I just wish Says You would release their episodes as a podcast.

FedRegister• 12 years ago

It's nice that we have a source of news that is not beholden to advertisers or corporate interests (although the number of 'This content was made possible by donations from...' I hear at the end of the larger shows is a bit worrying).

Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a thing, ain't it? The vast majority of NPR's funding comes from advertisers, excuse me, underwriters.

Edit: Well fuck me I'm wrong. Carry on, citizen.

VikingCoder• 12 years ago

The vast majority

No, it doesn't. From what I can see, it's more like 17%.

http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances

rquantz• 12 years ago

The vast majority of NPR's funding comes from member stations.

dublinben2• 12 years ago

Says You is an independently produced program. They sell individual episodes on their website for a very modest $0.95. You can always listen for free each week on your local station, or through the WGBH stream.

http://www.saysyou.net/zencart/

javaun7• 12 years ago

I was going to put this into a thread below re: public vs. private NPR APIs, but it seems more relevant here.

Content programming fees are NPR's main form of revenue. When your station WXYZ holds a fundraiser, you donate to them, not to NPR. WXYZ pays NPR on a sliding scale. A station with 1 million listeners pays roughly 10x what a station with 100k listeners pay. NPR is actually barred from accepting donations directly, again "bypass". (NPR can take big one-time gifts, like the Joan Kroc $250M).

Stations pay the biggest dollars for the big "tent pole" shows (Morning Edition/All Things Considered) and this supports many other program and functions. In the FM world, stations have basically had exclusive distribution right. Digital changes that, of course, and creates the "bypass" I mentioned below. This is why you've never seen a ME/ATC podcast (I'm the anonymous answerer here: http://www.quora.com/Why-does-NPR-not-offer-All-Things-Consi...)

It's very possible (and was being discussed) that since listeners are logged on, NPR One could know if you're a supporter and suppress the pledge drive.

The challenge is that NPR and it's stations are still tethered together by the governance model. No one can "go it alone" without some changes, they'll either weather disruption together or fail together.

dredmorbius2• 12 years ago

I'm generally aware of much of this, but it suggests an interesting argument about economics, in general. Pay according to ability, "tent-pole" products (these exist in for-profit services and retail as well), etc.

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

I hope it's better than the "This American Life" Android app. I'm still angry that I spent real money on a buggy mobile interface that freezes and crashes for podcasts that are free in a normal browser.

kbenson• 12 years ago

I'm relieved they have an android app. From listening to NPR, one could almost think andoid was some niche player, based on the amount of free press the iphone gets. That may have eased up some recently, but for a while it felt like they had some meeting where they decided to replace "smartphone" with "iphone" in everything they said.

prawks• 12 years ago

Nothing for Windows Phone, unfortunately. Though I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere when it comes to market share.

Nicholas_C• 12 years ago

On the website for my local NPR station (91.7 KXT, Dallas/Fort Worth) they have a playlist that shows recently played songs and the only option to "Buy Song" takes you to iTunes. I'm assuming they get a share of the revenues from songs purchased and I wish they would link to Amazon or Google Play instead so I could help support. They've introduced me to a lot of good bands and I buy a couple songs I hear on the station a week.

ejfox2• 12 years ago

I scrolled through this whole thread looking for a mention of Swell who have been my go-to app for this purpose for the past couple of months (feels like it's been forever though, can't imagine life without it).

I pretty much get NPR hourly news updates, Fresh Air, interspersed with episodes of Marc Maron's WTF and some random stuff like A16Z and stuff from the BBC. It's pretty much ideal.

I love NPR, and before Swell would just have the local station on all day, but I find that NPR doesn't make enough content to fill up a whole day of straight listening (at least not enough content that I like) - I wonder if the NPR One app would automatically find shows from their archive that I might be interested in to fill the time.

I'd be curious if other users of Swell will be switching to this app, or if they, like me, see it as a slightly different and improved model to tie together content from a variety of different sources.

covati• 12 years ago

well, now that swell is shutting down it might make sense. But I'll miss the variety that I get from swell :(

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/28/apple-to-buy-swell-for-30-m...

pbreit3• 12 years ago

Another option: http://anten.na

jim-greer2• 12 years ago

I listened for about 20 minutes at lunch, and they did play a story from the archives...

brianbreslin• 12 years ago

My first thought was "I hope this is paid like pandora." I would love to be able to purchase content in app, or at least contribute through the app. Maybe split the proceeds with my local npr station so we can end those annoying fund raising drives.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

Good stuff, but your feed will be 'hadcrafted'? No it won't. That specifically means a human being involved in structuring your feed at the other end I seriously doubt that's the case. Words have meanings beyond their emotional marketing value, subverting them for commercial ends will eventually erode the trust of your audience.

mtinkerhess• 12 years ago

You don't know that there's not a human being at the other end curating the list, do you? It's plausible that there's manual selection involved in each day's playlist.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

As I said already 'I seriously doubt that's the case.'

rugbydev3• 12 years ago

Fast Co has an interview that talks about this in more detail: http://www.fastcolabs.com/3033672/peeking-under-the-hood-of-...

djhworld• 12 years ago

I love NPR and listen to a few of their podcasts via PocketCasts.

Not sure if I'd actually use this app, but just wanted to say you guys in the states are fortunate to have NPR producing top quality radio!

zellyn2• 12 years ago

On my Nexus 5, this went through the login/signup process, but now crashes on startup. Every time.

Anyone else had better luck?

pachydermic• 12 years ago

Check for the update?

zellyn2• 12 years ago

Didn't help.

meandave• 12 years ago

This is pretty great, I actually hacked together a little terminal interface to search through all of their stations and stream straight to your shell. Started pulling it apart to also provide a webaudio interface. Looks like they have that covered now though

marineboudeau• 12 years ago

Shameless plug: WNYC is experimenting in this space as well with Discover [http://www.wnyc.org/mobile] - contains our local, national content but also others': NPR, PRX, etc. It works on the subway, while you're offline.

We're really excited about NPR One, too and glad to be part of it as well.

chris_mahan• 12 years ago

National Personal Radio?

ck2• 12 years ago

Why not for my desktop browser too?

rugbydev3• 12 years ago

It is, http://one.npr.org

jcburns2• 12 years ago

Oh please, NPR, take the money you spend on developing fancy misguided apps that supposedly serve up "curated content" and spend it on more reporters' salaries.

Lots more reporters. Lots and LOTS more reporters. The world is a big place, and the list of crucial, complex, reportable issues is growing by the day.

Then we can enjoy the "curation" work of the producers of the fine programs you put on the air and online—have you heard them? They're really a pretty good example of curated content. (Of course, those programs used to simply be called good broadcast journalism.)

npunt• 12 years ago

To hire reporters you need $. To get $ in the digital age, you really should have some control of the distribution of your content. Therefore, an app makes sense, especially at NPRs scale.

jcburns2• 12 years ago

NPR has had INTENSE control of their content since the 1970s. They don't need an app for that. They also have staggering amounts of donations and endowment funds. They may, sadly, have more money than they know what to do with.

NPR One

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