App Review: Radio New Zealand

NEW ZEALAND! OKAY!?

Despite what some 1980s pop-star madmen will try to tell you, video did not kill the radio star. Neither did cassettes, CDs, DVDs or even MP3s. In fact, radio is so un-dead, that despite Apple’s dogged determination to ignore it into obsolescence, people are still clamouring to be able to listen to it on their iPhones and iPod touches. Rumours of radio integration seem to arise every time a product refresh is on the horizon, and there has even been talk of radio being ‘enabled’ in a future firmware update for iPhone and iPod touch, but until those pigs sprout wings and fly, radio lovers will continue to be forced to look to other means of getting their ‘wireless’ (in the sense that your Grandma means it) fix.

Up until now there has been a handful of free apps that deliver streaming for specific radio stations such as George FM and The Edge, but now there’s a new solution on the block in the form of Radio New Zealand. Not to be confused with the actual Radio New Zealand, this is a paid app that streams several major Kiwi radio stations including ZM, The Breeze, Newstalk ZB, Classic Hits, More FM, Radio Hauraki and a great deal more. But is it any good? We take a look.

First things first: I don’t know how legal this app is. Not only does the very title of the app seem to tread on the toes of our national broadcaster, but there is absolutely no indication anywhere within the app that these streams are authorised by the respective radio stations. iTunes says the app is made by ’24/7 iPhone Apps’ but the support link is dead and the email address in the product description is a Gmail one. A quick Google search throws up this website but little is given away in terms of who these guys are. I’ve emailed their address along with some of the radio stations involved for comment and will let you know what they come back with, but for now let’s just focus on the app itself and what it does.

Plenty of choice

Visually, there’s not much to see here. There is little in the way of eye-candy or innovation – just a very basic list of radio stations that you tap to select. Once streaming, you can add the currently-playing station to your list of favourites which can be accessed in the future by tapping the favourites icon at the bottom of the screen. That’s it. There are no extra features such as the name of the currently-playing track, the name of the show playing, no schedule, no information about the radio station, no access to its website to browse whilst listening or any of those things that one might reasonably expect from an iPhone app in the year 2010.

The list is also just one long, unorganised list that doesn’t seem to be in any particular order. At first glance it appears to be sorted alphabetically but once you’ve reached ‘Z’ the list then carries on with more stations in a completely random fashion. There are also a lot of unexplained double-ups: for example with ZM there is a generic ‘ZM Online’, then ‘ZM Onlie Radio’ (listed twice, one underneath the other) and then ‘ZM Christchurch’ and ‘ZM Auckland’ which are both listed twice. Similar anomalies exist for The Breeze and many of the others including More FM which is listed eight times, all one-on-top-of-the-other with different frequencies next to them but no explanation as to what the difference is. It would be nice to be able to sort the list into genres or local areas. There is, however, a search dialogue to let you narrow the list down to your specific choice.

A response has been recived

Once you have tapped on the radio station of your choice the app tells you it is connecting and then begins some sort of percentage count which starts at 0% and gradually climbs up a few per-cent every second until it displays ‘recived response’ (sic) and begins buffering before playing. Some of the stations seem to take an age to connect and some seem to connect pretty quickly. While the radio station plays there is a volume slider and a stop button, but that is all.

So we’ve established that the app isn’t much to look at, but that’s secondary to the sound, right? So is it any good? It’s okay. It’s a long, long way from digital quality, a long way from basic 128kbps MP3 quality, and probably sitting somewhere around the quality of listening to a cassette tape. I’m no expert, but to me it sounds like each stream is merely a digitised capture of the FM broadcast rather than a clean feed coming direct from the source. If you don’t go in expecting anything better than what you might get from a pocket radio then you’re not going to be particularly disappointed. I did experience issues with ZM however where every second or so it would hiss briefly and some channels including More FM seemed to have over-exaggerated and distorted bass. I’ve tried it over 3G and my wifi connection and I get the same results so I’m sure it’s not just my connection. It bothers me, and it might bother you but then again it might not. Note that the app does not display the bit-rate of the playing stream so it’s impossible to say how much data this app consumes so this is something to bear in mind when listening over 3G.

The app is priced at $2.59 and I’m torn over whether this is okay or not. On the one hand, I’m thinking that the dev has put minimal effort into this app and is profiting off the back of radio stations that may not have authorised this (I could be wildly wrong about all this, and if I find out that I am I will post an update), but on the other hand I’m thinking that $2.59 for access to several decent radio stations is not too bad a deal. At the end of the day this app is what it is with no frills or surprises, so it’s up to you to decide whether you want to spend money on this. I did and I regret it a little, but I will no doubt use it again.

– Radio NZ [iTunes]

Know any other radio gems? Bought this app and have an opinion? Share with the class in the comments!