August 16, 2009
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Clear Channel’s Streaming Audio Play with iPhone
Clear Channel’s IHeartRadio app has scored 2.5 million unique downloads on the iPhone and Blackberry.
2009 has been an especially rough year for the radio industry, with revenue down a whopping 24% during the first quarter. But online radio is a small but fast-growing sector that continues to pick up steam, including a 13% spike in first-quarter 2009, thanks in large part to aggressive efforts by companies such as Clear Channel, which made a big bet on streaming audio five years ago as a source of organic growth in audience and eventually revenue.Those plans accelerated last summer with the launch of Clear Channel’s first mobile app, IHeartRadio, which has gone on to amass 2.5 million unique downloads on the iPhone and BlackBerry. The mobile momentum has also translated to Clear Channel’s overall online audience, with 22 million unique listeners frequenting the company’s digital properties each month and over 9 million unique visits to the company’s digital media player, with streaming adding a 15% increase to the company’s total radio audience.
The ultimate irony?Clear Channel, the company most commonly associated with homogenizing the airwaves with restricted playlists and redundant oldies stations, wants to become the ultimate artist-discovery tool for music fans online. It’s even taking a few cues from satellite radio, tapping the likes of Christina Aguilera and The Eagles to curate their own radio stations. “We haven’t looked at ourselves as just a radio company for some time now,” said Evan Harrison, Clear Channel Radio’s exec VP-head of online.
The moves have also helped Clear Channel distinguish itself from No. 2 competitor CBS Radio, which recently acquired Last.FM and added Yahoo and AOL’s streaming radio players to its network. aggregating an audience that often competes neck-and-neck for online radio share. Keeping the competition healthy, Pandora, the web’s top streaming audio site, tapped Clear Channel to lead its audio ad sales, an ironic move for a startup whose founder set out to become the world’s largest standalone radio company.
