BBC iPlayer Radio app to close with a staggered shutdown starting Monday 16th September according to a recent BBC blog. Over a two week period or so, users will get a message when they open the old app to say that it is being closed, and depending on their device, they will be guided to the right place to find BBC Sounds to continue listening to BBC Radio.
James Purnell, Director, Radio & Education at the BBC said, “With changes to people’s listening habits and increased global competition in the audio market, I want BBC radio to maintain its unique place in people’s daily lives in the decades to come. For this, we need our brilliant stations to stay strong, and we also want to grow our new audio app BBC Sounds. We launched BBC Sounds last year. It’s the digital home for all of our audio content, from music to podcasts and of course our stations.”
Purnell continued, “Equally, Sounds has allowed us to improve our podcast offer and make it easier for our audiences to find new ones to love. A record 7.1m UK adults now listen to podcasts every week – a 24% increase on last year – and when specifically looking at younger audiences (15-34 year olds), nearly 1 in 5 listen to podcasts. We’ve pushed the creative boundaries by making shows like Forest 404, 13 Minutes To The Moon and That Peter Crouch Podcast which would have been difficult to commission for a schedule. They sit alongside established podcasts and much loved radio programmes from The Archers to Brexitcast and Desert Island Discs.”
Launched in June 2018, BBC Sounds came in for significant criticism as being feature poor at its launch but recent developments have started to add back in iPlayer Radio functionality and add new capabilities such as restart and rewind live radio, Chromecast and Alexa support and In Car app support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. According to the BBC, Sounds now matches the major features and functionality of iPlayer Radio, however in an update to the post on 6th September the following items were noted as being in iPlayer Radio but not implemented in Sounds:
- Programme downloads won’t transfer over with your BBC Account when you move from iPlayer Radio to Sounds.
- Higher quality downloads which were available on iPlayer Radio will not be available on BBC Sounds as ‘only a very small number of users opted to use the higher quality downloads on iPlayer Radio.’
- Widgets are also another casualty of the move with the same ‘low usage’ reasoning and will be replaced by notifications which ‘offer similar functionality’.
- International listeners will not be able to use the BBC Sounds app but will be able to access content via the BBC Sounds website and the international iPlayer Radio app.
Future developments promised ‘soon’ are enhanced sorting in downloads and the capability to sort subscriptions and bookmarks. Within the next few weeks your local station will appear in the BBC Sounds dial. The station will be based on the postcode that’s linked to your BBC Account (which you can update in settings if needed).
The BBC claims nearly 1.9 million weekly signed in users, asserting that ‘BBC Sounds is used by more people across our digital platforms than the old iPlayer Radio app’.
