When NextRadio announced an adoption milestone in October — one-million downloads of the NextRadio app — we charted the adoption curve based on reported milestones in the TagStation blog. NextRadio is a consumer FM tuner for smartphones, available on select Sprint phones in which the FM receiving chip is activated. TagStation is the industry-facing information source which encourages radio stations to become NextRadio-enabled so listeners can receive the station on their phones.
Now TagStation has announced 2-million NextRadio app downloads, so it’s back to the charts for us. NextRadio downloads jumped from 1.5-million in February, thanks in part to an organized and widespread radio ad campaign.
To match a new monthly pace of reporting in the TagStation blog, we have removed middle-month progress that was in the earlier chart, when TagStation updated metrics every two weeks. The result is a rough month-by-month curve, since September 2013, corresponding to blog posting dates.
The curve of listening hours is steeper than the download growth. Since reaching 1-million downloads, the number of listening hours per download has grown from 1.4 to 1.8, a 29% gain.
TagStation also tracks the number of stations which have adopted the platform:
The growth curve of participating radio stations is nearly flat in recent months. In the two months since February’s 1.5-million benchmark, and the start of a broad radio promotion of NextRadio, downloads have grown 27%, listening hours 38%, but participating radio stations just 3%.
Solid momentum for the NextRadio initiative. I’d be interested to see how the adoption rate compares to the iHeart app, especially now that the marketing campaign is underway. Any chance you can compare the two?
Thanks Mike. iHeartRadio doesn’t disclose monthly download or listening-hour metrics. The Android app has been downloaded 10-million times.