In a memo today, Entercom CEO David Field announced that the company will pull all of its station streams off of the TuneIn App and host the exclusively on the company’s Radio.com.
Legacy Entercom stations will exit TuneIn on July 6 with the former CBS Radio stations following on August 1. The move comes as the company is planning to ramp up efforts to drive listeners to the Radio.com platform with increased promotion both on-air and online for it. Moving forward all Entercom stations will identify on-air as “a Radio.com station”.
The loss of the Entercom portfolio is another major hit for TuneIn as an aggregator as it does not have any of the five biggest station operators anymore with iHeartMedia, Cumulus and Alpha Media stations on the iHeartRadio app, Entercom on Radio.com, and Townsquare Media on its own RadioPup app. The move follows TuneIn’s intent to explore a sale of its business.
Today, I am pleased to announce that Radio.com will become the exclusive digital platform for all of Entercom’s radio stations. During July and August, we will remove our stations from TuneIn to drive all digital listening of our outstanding stations, shows, and personalities to our own Radio.com platform. The transition dates are July 6th for the legacy Entercom stations and August 1st for the legacy CBS stations.
One of the benefits of our scale and the quality of our brands and content is the ability to compete effectively in the rapidly growing digital audio sector. As the nation’s #1 creator of live, original, local audio content with a lineup of 235 outstanding stations, and the country’s unrivaled leader in news and sports radio, we have assets no other company can match and an enviable reach of over 112 million listeners per month plus tens of millions more on our digital and social platforms.
We are committed to making Radio.com a leader in the digital audio space. We have added a number of highly talented leaders to our team to help lead the charge. Over the next several months, we will be rolling out new product features, distribution partners, advanced advertising products, and other improvements to enrich the user experience and enhance our value to customers. Our goal is to make Radio.com a daily habit for many millions of Americans.
Beginning this week, we will be significantly ramping up our efforts to drive our listeners and others to download and use Radio.com, particularly those who have been enjoying our local brands on TuneIn. We are fortunate to own Radio.com and believe it is an outstanding brand name to build around. In order to elevate consumer awareness of Radio.com and drive downloads, we will be increasing our on-air and off-air promotion. As part of that effort, we will be embracing Radio.com on all of our stations, identifying them on-air as “a Radio.com station”.
This is an exciting day for Entercom as we take a big step forward to becoming a leading player in digital audio. Once again, we are playing offense. And with our #1 position in creating outstanding, proprietary local audio content, we are well positioned for success.
Let’s make sure we all do our part to ensure that every one of our fans become regular users of Radio.com when listening to or engaging with our stations on mobile devices, computers or smart speakers.
kent 
MediaFan85 
Nathan Obral 
photoman15 
airplane777 
radioradio 
audioguy 
terster 
phillycatmom
Unless things have changed recently, Alpha was planning to be on both iHeart and TuneIn as part of a non-exclusive deal.
Will Radio.com launch a skill on Alexa? I listen to 94.1 The Sound from Seattle on my Amazon Echo through TuneIn.
Considering the size and scope of this retrenchment, I’d be flabbergasted if they didn’t launch radio . com skills to Alexa.
There IS a skill for radio.com, but you have to invoke it by saying “Alexa, ask Entecom to play WCBS-AM”.
I want a NATIVE Alexa app like TuneIn or Pandora or iHeart where you just have to say “Alexa, play WCBS-AM”
Radio stations should make their streams available and compatible with any streaming device on the market. I listen to KGNC on a reciva.com based wifi internet radio. If stations would maintain a MP3 or AAC stream and publish their streaming links on their web page it would make everything better for the listener and provide more listeners for the station.
This isn’t 2005 anymore, or 2010, or even 2015. So much technology has been launched into the marketplace that has caused untold levels of disruption and a want for proprietary brands by audio content creators (iHeartRadio, Radio.com, et al). There will likely be more disruption through tech advancements before a unifying moment occurs.
Ironically TuneIn was initially created as a catch-all for all internet radio streams.
Entercom should just purchase TuneIn and own the world of stations they now stream. It really is a good app in many ways….minus all the damn ads for Comcast Business Internet…
The fractionalization of online listening into various proprietary websites will be a terrible disappointment for listeners to smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo that currently use TuneIn. I don’t want to see TuneIn bought by Entercom or CBS or iHeart. They will just limit the selections to their own stations and block you from accessing others. Instead, I hope Amazon buys it. TuneIn is great because it is independent of these large media companies that just want to force you to only listen to their stations.
audioguy I love your idea and would really like to see it happen! Lets keep it independent and then if other major US radio companies want in, they can do so-which I think they would!
It would be nice if Tune in could support Reciva.com I spent a lot of money on this internet radio for it to become obsolete.
I agree with others… so many of the channels we listen to, YOUR CHANNELS, we listen to on TuneIn and now they will be moved to Radio.Com. Although that’s fine in and of itself… how are we to stream your channels to our Amazon Alexa devices?
I would have thought there would be an Amazon SKILL created for listeners before you pull all the channels from TuneIn.
To stream using your app and then connecting to my Alexa devices via Bluetooth is simply not practical for us. It needs to be a SKILL.
The other thing… there are a lot of apps that are NOT compatible with Googles Android Auto. TuneIn is compatible as is IHeart Radio. Because of this, i’m able to stream your stations while driving and listen with my full audio system.
How will we be able to stream your stations now that they are being pulled from TuneIn?
I know you still have 48hrs before TuneIn goes dark with your stations… is there a plan to make this a relatively seamless transition for all of your customers/all of your listeners?
Thanks
T
Radio.com is a skill on the Amazon Echo, but when you activate the skill, it’s only on one device. I just got off the phone with Amazon.com, and after trying several ways to get Alexa to play a Radio.com station on multiple devices, we decided that the only way this could be done was to make Radio.com a service instead of a skill. This information was sent to the developers; hopefully, this issue will be resolved soon.