I have a list with the Apple Music URLs of about 25 Dutch radio stations and most of them broadcast on FM, DAB or both.
I’m also able to get Canadian and US university stations here in The Netherlands, eg. CKUT, KALX, WICB, WXYC and others. So you can always try to find the station you want to listen to in Apple Music.
I don’t use it for stations local to me but I to listen to BBC and other services from international broadcasters all the time. I use use Siri to play the station I need, and it works every time, so no fussing with searching or making lists.
There is some stations that seem to fall through the crack the integration is not perfect. I think the onus of station maintenance is on the station themselves.
I use it on my HomePod all the time. I’m learning Spanish and listen to a couple of radio stations from Mexico City every morning to help me develop my ear for the language. I created a shortcut (“Buenos Dias, Siri”) as a trigger .
I also listen to some stations from around the US to get a taste of local music. WWOZ in New Orleans is a great station if you are into traditional jazz.
I think there’s a difference in terms of ads revenue. Alexa uses TuneIn, but they insert their own pre-roll ad before connecting the audio stream.
So Apple or Amazon owns the audience while the distribution belongs to TuneIn and the radio station provides the content. Sitting in between this chain there are the ad agencies, which now have more options to put their advertisers. Everything is more difficult and fragmented but with better segmentation tools. And, at the end of the day, it’s kind of a win-win for everyone because these days almost nobody uses a radio set any more.
I don’t think there’s any difference for the listener.
I have used Triode from Icon Factory for years now. I really like it. I use it daily. It is not updated very often, but it is pretty feature rich and universal, even supporting Apple TV.
One frustration with local stations through Apple Music is the lack of album artwork and further information. Triode shows album art and song info, if the radio station tags their song, on the Play and Lock Screen. It also keeps a history of what was played, and you can open the songs in your history in Apple Music to add them to playlists or your library. As I use local radio for music discovery, this is really valuable. It also had Shazam integration for the stations that don’t tag their music to show the song, album and artwork.
As I said, it hasn’t been updated in quite a while, but I am hoping with the new Liquid Glass UX, it will get a new coat of paint.
Nope. Not an Apple Music subscriber. I only listen to the local (Florida) FM stations during college/NFL football seasons. Some SEC/ACC games are broadcast on Spotify channels, so I’m covered.
I am passionately fond of traditional Celtic music. I grew up listening to a program on NPR called Thistle and Shamrock, hosted by Fiona Ritchie. The program retired a couple years ago, but Ritchie is still brodcasting on Internet Radio via Soma.fm as Thistle Radio.
Yes, some people use local radio stations on Apple Music mainly for niche or distant broadcasts but it is a lesser used feature with some limitations like no favorites and ads.
As I was searching for the stations, I found that I had to search by the name of the radio and if it was available it would show up. You are correct that it seems that the list it shows under “Local Broadcasters” on the phone in Apple Music does not correspond to my local stations.
But I was amazed to see that it also had BBC London.
I use it to sometimes listen to 107.5 the game, for during the week Gamecock football talk.
I will sometimes use for NPR Talk in SC. They don’t allow the NPR Classical stream in Apple Music.
And—FORGIVE ME—as a night owl I often fall asleep listening to Coast to Coast AM using my local talk radio station’s stream.
For stations that don’t show in Apple Music, I just use the open stream link to add, for example, the classical side of my local NPR.