Author: Steven Clift

After many months of work, we’ve added a new showcase of nearly 200 on-demand high quality radio news (mostly) shows and podcasts, including daily and weekly shows from 30+ countries in English.

Our amazingly 4.9 rated Pro app has a special shortwave Global Showcase with 30+ mostly daily shows from all around the world not found with this level of coverage in one convenient place on any other app. If you love “shortwave” news programming but want to listen on your own schedule, this is your dream app.  The app includes many shows no longer available on shortwave like Radio Sweden as well as shows in English from places you didn’t expect like Mongolia.

In the Pro app we’ve tossed in a few additional showcases of weekly shows including a pack of Science/Environmental shows, a Kids collection (like stories I can play for my kids), and a learning English set of podcasts.

Our free app, in addition to the new headline sources, includes a Pro Showcase sharing some daily news shows highlighted from our Pro collection, for all to enjoy for a limited time. (With our paid app, it is the convenience and careful show/stream selection and NOT the radio content for which you are paying. If you have time, you can find the buried gems across the web.)

Podcasts?

In addition to daily shows, we’ve culled through podcast popularity lists for major countries and identified many of the most popular news-related shows as well as popular “podcasts” of entertaining weekly shows from major public broadcasters and others. We have more to add, but are being very selective despite nearing 200 on-demand shows.

Unlike often complicated podcast apps, we simply play the latest episode of frequently updated shows with one button. While not as fast as streaming, most shows start within 10 seconds. If you actually want to go back and listen to old stuff, get yourself a podcast app or visit the stations directly.

Future Features

Radio news junkies looove us and a 4.9 rating makes 1 Radio order cialis online pharmacy News Pro one of the highest rated paid apps on Google Play with a real user base.

However, let’s be honest and note that 1 Radio News is a bootstrapped micro start-up at this point.

1 Radio News is essentially a hobby with a chance of becoming a go-to app for a million or more radio news listeners seeking the most convenient access to news and information via mobile and other devices. However, only IF you and everyone who loves this app helps spread the word will we bring quality radio from diverse global sources to more people. Most of our potential users have no idea what they are missing! (And we don’t have the million dollars needed to advertise ourselves to a million downloads … yet. ;-).) So please share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and via email.

Revenue from more Pro app sales and more free users clicking on the very non-intrusive ads we run will go straight into new features. So, for version 3.0 we need to reach at least 25,000 downloads up from 10,000. We are building momentum with more than double the number of daily users and new daily installs over a few months ago.

Future feature ideas include “pre-sets” or favorites, sortable play all list for on-demand, sleep timer, alarm clock, and others. Some features may become in-app purchases in the free version. See the button within the app to our Google+ 1 Radio News Beta community or contact us at comments@1radionews.com to ask for an invite to join our Beta team.

A huge thanks goes out to our lead developer William Seemann for his work on the app since day one. We may engage additional developers to help us as our “day jobs” keep us busy, so get in touch if you are passionate about mobile app development and radio news on Android, iOS, Windows 10, Roku, and/or other platforms.

Thank you for being a 1 Radio New fan!

Steven Clift
1 Radio News Guy – Show/stream selector, app promoter and owner.

To celebrate 10,000 downloads, we are liberating a station from our awesome Pro app for access via our free version.

Review the candidate stations via our free app, then vote here.

Or to get all the candidates and around 200 other English-language news, talk, and other spoken word programming NOW, go with the highly rated Pro version.

With a 4.8 to 4.9 rating, 1 Radio News Pro is in the top 10 to 25 of PAID News and Magazine apps on Google Play depending upon the day.

According to researchers we’ve been contacted by, 1 Radio News Pro is one of most popular paid apps around. Thank you users!

A huge thanks goes out to our Pro users. It is your contribution that is helping pay for our coming 2.1 version that add hundreds of on-demand shows.

Like our many pro users, try out the free version and if you want many many more English speaking news/etc. stations that are almost impossible to find online, go pro!

We blogged previously about how we cracked the top ten for the search “radio news” and struggled to rise for those searching Google Play for “news radio.”

We’ve been #1 for “radio news” above Fox News Radio, CBS Radio News and others for months now. We are normally #4 for the more searched “news radio” term too!

Because we are best app to listen to what are classically known as shortwave radio stations, we are #2 for shortwave, and shortwave radio. Google doesn’t tell us which organic searches lead to the most downloads, but we are glad to have so many new users.

According to App Annie, we rank in the top ten for searches like “hourly news,” “world news radio,” “public radio news” and “talk radio.” Today we are #28 for “world news” but for the grand daddy that we need to break out, we need to show up when you simply search “radio” on Google Play. Can a news/talk/culture focused radio app break in on such a search with all the music filled apps? Time will tell!

10,000 Downloads

Our big news is that our free 1 Radio News app, crossed the 10,000 where to buy clonazepam online download mark. In fact, we’ve crossed the 12,500 mark!

Of course, the number Google doesn’t share publicly is the uninstall rate. With our rise in the search results and our more attractive icon, we have lots more people trying out our app.

Bottom line, we’ve gone from 70 active app users a day in December when we released Version 2.0 to 450 a day in August 2015 with the rate of increase accelerating. With a quality high rated app like 1 Radio News, there is no reason in a world that shipped 1 billion new Android devices last year, that at least 1% who know English would like to listen to some radio news on their device. That’s 10,000,000 potential users. Say 10%, or 1,000,000 have the app installed and 10% used it each day, that would be 100,000 daily users. First up, getting to 1000 daily users, then 10,000.

To get there, we need to be discovered by a high profile app reviewer who says “now that you have Pandora or Spotify for music, get your radio news and more from 1 Radio News.” 🙂 If that’s you, let’s talk.

We let the crowd decide on our new app icon. We ran Google Ads with over 20 different icons and this is our stand out winner:

Interestingly, our original icon took second place. 🙂

Update: See 1 Radio News and Shortwave radio online

1 Radio News just rocketed up the results for some key Google Play searches – Radio News (#6) and Shortwave (#3).

We are back in the top ten with our new version 2 (hourly news on-demand AND live news) like we were with version 1 (on-demand only) of 1 Radio News last year.

In fact, it was discovering that our app was actually being found by people searching for “radio news” that inspired us to invest in version 2.

To our surprise, the act of upgrading our app caused us to fall way down the search results.

Yikes, near the bottom of the 250 listed for “radio news” on some days. Far better app … far worse exposure. Hmmm, what to do?

So we invested a bit in online ads (Google display network app install ads – ads in apps) to try and build our install base with the new version.

Ironically, we found that ads in the wrong countries cause a high uninstall rate. Why? Google install conversions doesn’t mean people will keep the app and based on the stats, some nations generated had uninstall rates of 80% while others had 30% (those weren’t necessarily ad driven installs).

The churn was probably hurting our ASO or App Store Optimization even though we did climb the search results week on week and break into the top 50 for “radio news.”

So we poured through our analytics and figured out which countries have the highest install retention rate and repeat users. We focused ads on high retention countries for a few weeks.

We love you Somalia and South Korea!  Clearly you want radio news on your mobile!

We would target ads to Iran too, but Adwords won’t let you. 🙂

(We fully expect the overall retention rates to fall in countries where we advertised for the first time, but it is too soon to check the numbers.)

We also tweaked our short description to include the term “shortwave.”

Why? In addition to being called a shortwave app by the media and picked up by shortwave blogs, we found that while few people clicked on our “Shortwave radio on mobile” ad, they converted to installs at one of the highest rates. Ads with many clicks but few installs are costly – meaning the wrong people liked the ad but they buy lorazepam online in canada didn’t actually like our product once they reached Google Play.

Last week we decided to stop paid ads to see how our app is settling in with only organic installs.

What did we find? We don’t know yet. 🙂 Stay tuned.

Tomorrow we might drop waaaay down the charts. Two days up in search results heaven may well be temporary.

In fact, on the reverse search “news radio” (which people search nearly twice as much on regular Google) we don’t appear at all in the top 250. We’ve been as high as 67 in the last 90 days according to AppAnnie.

However, as we have culled lots of free advice on ASO, let us add some. Our sense is that uninstalls rates impact your app store search placement. Advertising free apps dramatically increases your uninstalls. That said, advertising introduces your app to new loyal users in new places. If they like your app, they will by word of mouth may bring in more users. Will our new users across a number of African countries we secured via advertising tell two friends? Time will tell.

While written reviews on our paid app with 10x more stations are glowing, people who find our app on the store seem to like it. In fact, of the top six apps for “radio news” our rating is the best at 4.3. Notably our Pro version is rated at 4.8 … but both have relatively few ratings.

Lastly, what about our “Pro” app?

We found out that despite lots of ad clicks, no one was enticed to install the app for money. No one.

If our free app really takes off, we envision shifting to in-app purchases for more stations, no ads, and some other features separately. As far as we can tell, the free app is the best way to advertise the simple Pro upgrade for now. In fact, we are often just in the top 20 for Paid app installs in the News and Magazines category (31 right now). This probably says a lot more about how few people buy apps in this category than the popularity of our app. However, if we break the top ten in the number of News apps sold, that will be something! Stay tuned.

Here are some great reviews on Google Play about our Pro version:

• Holly says, “Just what I have been looking for I’ve wanted a variety of viewpoints on the headlines of the moment and this nails it. Thank you!”
• A Google User – “Like having a shortwave radio. It’s like having a old shortware radio only better because it’s digital, you get more stations and there’s no static. Listen to news from around the world and in the U.S. Hear news stories outside the main stream that your missing. Great app, thank you. Works on my old Gingerbread and newer Android tablet.
• Bill adds, “Finally!!!!!!! A low load radio app! Bought in immediately! Please keep adding…”
• Charles makes our day, “This is brilliant. This has most of the major radio news streams in one place. It replaced several of my older apps, which only had a few sites.”
• In a private email, “In the five or so years I’ve been into Android I’ve never left a review because I didn’t want a Google plus account. But that changed today. I wanted too, and did, leave your app 5 stars and good review after joining Google plus today.”

And on our free version:

• Abdulrauf says, “News in reach. Excellent.”
• Amer sums it up, “Great app. Quick and easy streaming.”

Please add your own comments and/or rating. According to Google folks, rating plays a key role in letting users know this app is great. (Meaning, the more folks who rate it, the higher it will show up in Google Play searches.)

Our goal is to show-up near the top when people search “radio news,” “news radio,” etc.  We’ve been # 1 for “hourly news” but who searches for that. 🙂

Last week we tweeted radio guru James Cridland about our updated app and he replied:

Interesting – a new world radio app that focuses on news radio. Nice idea. http://1radionews.com/  /via @democracy

Today in his email newsletter, we made the cut again!

Radio apps gain a new niche: There now seems to be four tiers of radio apps – station-specific (“Absolute Radio”), broadcaster-specific (“BBC iPlayer for Radio”), country-specific (“Radioplayer”), or international (“TuneIn”). All of these tiers appear to have their obvious leaders in each country. But I suspect we’ll see more specific radio apps, carving out new niches. Here’s one: the 1radionews app, which acts as a portal to news broadcasters, and news broadcasters only – including on-demand news bulletins, too.

Glad you like the idea. We do too!

The launch of Google Cast for audio, a way to use ChromeCast to send audio to fancy new and probably quite expensive speakers, is generating a lot of buzz.

You’d think getting audio off of our devices was a new thing. 🙂

We built our “store” to help you listen to 1 Radio News stations and other audio on the speakers already in your life!

In short, we want to help you get audio off your phones or tablets and on to bigger, richer sounding speakers. The reality is that a household can’t listen to the radio together very well on a small device.

So here is a tour of how you can get audio from your device into your life right now!

$ – Wires – I have a simple headphone to RCA stereo wire stuck into the back of my 20 year old Denon stereo. Very simple. Plug-in, press AUX on stereo remote, then press play. If you have a car radio with an AUX plug-in, grab this cable. Wires don’t need batteries. 🙂

$ – Cassette Adapter – Yeah, my car still eats tapes, both of them actually. These things actually work. Use them all the time. You might need to clean your tape heads.

$-$$$ – Headphones – Get yourself some wireless headphones or stick with the basics with earbuds. The wireless kind also work great with your desktop or laptop. This is how I mow the lawn. On those long drives where my wife and I want to have a conversation, good old headphone splitters are handy to have for the kids watching a movie on a tablet we rig up with a bungee cord and tape. So grab some kid’s headphones. 🙂

$$-$$$ – Bluetooth Portable Speakers – Almost a dime a dozen, lots of choices. These often throw an impressive sound and are as portable as your mobile device. Rechargeable.

$$ – Bluetooth Thingy for Home Audio System – If you have a new receiver with built-in Bluetooth, that’s great. If not, you can buy a thingy. I guess they are called Bluetooth Music Receivers.

$$$-$$$$ Bookshelf speakers – If you going to use your home audio system, might as well upgrade your speakers. The top three bookshelf speakers come from Sonos which actually connect straight via Wi-Fi.

$$ – $$$ – iPhone oriented speaker docks … they often have side plugs that we in the Android proletariat can use. We lost our old iPod and happily use the little speaker dock in our kitchen. Some are now advertised as Android speaker docks.

$-$$$ – Computer Speakers – Down in my basement, I use a Roku box with computer speakers and an old TV. There are lots of great radio apps on Roku and other steaming media player. You can hook these babies right into your phone or tablet.

$$ – FM Transmitter – Before BlueTooth got popular I used to use these in the car and around the home. The one I still use is a whole house FM transmitter on my home office desktop. This lets me use all the old radios around the house and listen to whatever I want.

$$$ – $$$$$$- Speaking of cars and Android. We think 1 Radio News will be the perfect simple swipe and play app for news on the new Android-based car systems. Sure you could just get car stereo with built-in bluetooth, but why not get a new car stereo running Android. If you install 1 Radio News in your car stereo, send us pictures. While you are at it, why not buy a new car running Android Auto.

$$$-$$$$$$$$$ – Home Theater Systems, Soundbars, 4K HDTVs – Or gosh darn, why not just buy an all new Internet-connected  home theater system … adding Bluetooth right in seems like a good excuse to surprise your spouse with this must have item (check the specs closely). 🙂 Or perhaps sneak in a new soundbar with Bluetooth and use with your new Smart TV. In fact, I’ve heard 1 Radio News can work on Google TV and the under the radar Android-based TV set-top boxes (and perhaps we will get on the official Android TV from Google system.) Or what you really need is a new 4K Ultra HD TVs – pick up this 105″ beauty for over $100,000. 🙂

$-$$$$ – All kinds of crazy stuff – From a floating solar pool speaker (pool not included) to a Bluetooth shower speaker: Outdoor Bluetooth Speakers, Solar Speakers, Bluetooth Shower Speaker, Android Boombox, Android Car Stereos, Sonos, Party Speakers

Did you pick up a new Android tablet or phone over the holidays?

Perhaps you have an older Android smart phone looking for a purpose?

Or some other whiz-bang new Android device you found from our list of top gear?

In the new year, now is a great time to turn your device into an easy to use world radio for news.

And we just added new stations from three countries to our free app and just tripled the number of radio news stations on our “Pro” version  to over 65.

Three key audio/radio-lover “must do” steps:

1. Install TuneIn radio – No brainer. Get lost in 100,000 stations.
2. Install Pandora – Ditto. Music.
3. Install 1 Radio News – Grab the free version or the Pro version with the BEST 65+ English radio news stations we tested, evaluated, and selected to take you around the world.Whether you are a public radio fan, a shortwave listener, looking to spice up your talk radio listening by going global, or perhaps you don’t even have a radio (like my Millennial neighbors), if you like to be informed with news or engaged by the spoken word, 1 Radio News is a must have app for you.If you want more:
4. Optional – Podcasts – Consider Stitcher or another podcast program IF you want to curate purchase valtrex your own list of specific programs. If you invest a few hours now following shows, you’ll have programs “on the go” later.
5. Optional – Station Apps – If you search Google Play for your favorite station you might find a dedicated app. If you like to “channel surf,” I recommend 1 Radio News for the quickest channel changing. If you really just like to listen to one station, then a dedicated app is great.

Why add 1 Radio News to your app mix?

• Great Radio News Stations – We’ve found the best English-language sources from around the world and put them together for you in one handy app. Hours and hours curating the best for you.
• Quick – The quickest station changing we can find. 1 Radio News is fast.
• Headlines – The only Android app with a collection of on-demand hourly radio news headlines. Play-all option.
• Easy – Can you swipe and press a button? You can use with one hand. If you really just want radio news, this is the easiest app to use.
• Be Surprised – Embrace the serendipity of live news, talk, and cultural radio. Discover what’s on and relax. Key is to get the gear you need to actually listen comfortably.