Clear Channel radio continues to surprise the radio faithful with new announcements in recent days of their plans to merge the radio and digital music experiences like never before. Their tool? An application they are calling: iHeartRadio.
The cleverly named app is designed, as Clear Channel describes it, to give listeners everywhere everything they want in one place. That includes access to 750 Clear Channel radio stations across the country (commercial free through the year), plus the ability to create playlists, ala Pandora, with, evidently, a greater selection and more control (most likely the ability to fast forward and skip more songs than Pandora currently allows).
While radio purists will no doubt take a wait and see attitude leading up to the September launch, the media giant’s desire to make sure traditional radio is readily available to digital consumers on an even wider scale is a true positive – lest the AM/FM medium loses another generation of music consumers.
And you certainly cannot fault Clear Channel for putting its money where its mouth is. More recently announced is their 2-day iHeartRadio Music Festival, set for September 23-24 in Las Vegas, which will be a ‘who’s who’ of live recording artists, hosted by Ryan Seacrest, arguably the king of that vital next generation.