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Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#11

Post by Reason077 »

Gunstig2Snath wrote: post #4

I love the Radioplayer and to date I can’t get my head round Sounds. It just hasn’t got the same functionality unless one wants to listen to music. Radio plays, comedies et al are my listening menu. It seems that things are gradually being removed from the iPlayer. I’m old so not important to the new BBC.

I use iPlayer Radio too, and admittedly I haven’t gotten around to trying BBC Sounds yet.

But one thing iPlayer Radio has never been very good at is content discovery. You really have to know what you’re looking for, where as Netflix or Spotify are pretty good at the “you like these genres, so you’ll love this one!” game.

I believe this personalisation aspect is what BBC are trying to solve with Sounds.

Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#12

Post by werid »

paule89 wrote: post #9
Reason077 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”pirates have distributed content through RSS for a long time and it was a much better UX than anything offered by the big players.” Perhaps if viewed through a technical/hacker lens. But platforms like Netflix, Spotify, and iPlayer have been successful at attracting (paying!) users precisely because their UX is so much better. Better than traditional TV boxes, and also better than the pirate world.

As long as there is only 1 or 2 platforms, which you have to choose and pay for. If there are too many fish in the see and you have to pay for all of them, people will pay for none of them.

This is already a problem in sports, especially football/soccer. Many leagues/competitions are spread out among several streaming services.

Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#13

Post by afandian »

I commented on the BBC website but I might as well post it here too:

As a proud listener, viewer and supporter of the BBC, this is one part that seems really unfortunate. Why should I need an account to listen to BBC content? All the pages on the BBC website that pretend to answer this question are evasive and dodge the question. What do you have to hide?

Please re-consider. Allow your content to be made available via open standards, like some of your podcasts. Let us choose how to consume the content that we fund.

Please let me use whatever device and app I want. I don't use a Google account on my android phone because I value my privacy. That means I can't install the Sounds app. Please let me listen to the BBC without having to have a Google or Apple account.

Please let us listen to radio without being tracked. Trust is already eroded given the evasive wording on your help pages.

Please think of those people in the UK who don't have a post-code (like visitors) or email address (like the elderly).

And please come clean about why you need personal details to listen to the radio.

Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#14

Post by morrbo »

Angostura wrote: post #10
Gunstig2Snath wrote: post #4

I love the Radioplayer and to date I can’t get my head round Sounds. It just hasn’t got the same functionality unless one wants to listen to music. Radio plays, comedies et al are my listening menu. It seems that things are gradually being removed from the iPlayer. I’m old so not important to the new BBC.

I’m still a iPlayer Radio user and don’t really plan to switch to Sounds anytime soon, due to missing functionality. (I listen to podcasts on the Apple app) But I haven’t seen anything being removed from iPlayer Radio yet. BTW - you can find non-music stuff in Categories below the fold on the Sounds app - so there’s Drama, for example. No more granular categorisation into Crime, Historical etc - which is a shame

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Sounds is utterly terrible. It's really difficult when they push it so much on the radio (ie. minimum 4 times per hour mentioned on radio 6 in the morning. I though, yeah ok then i'll support and give it a go. It's (well, when I tried it a while back) missing casting, an alarm, downloading, and easy way to search and find radio programmes, and a whole heap of other "base" features.

I am genuinely shocked as to why they're pushing it so hard, especially given that the current iplayer radio app is fantastic.

Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#16

Post by chrisseaton »

afandian wrote: post #13

I commented on the BBC website but I might as well post it here too: As a proud listener, viewer and supporter of the BBC, this is one part that seems really unfortunate. Why should I need an account to listen to BBC content? All the pages on the BBC website that pretend to answer this question are evasive and dodge the question. What do you have to hide? Please re-consider. Allow your content to be made available vi…

> Why should I need an account to listen to BBC content?

It doesn't apply to audio of course, but watching BBC video content now requires you to be a licence payer doesn't it? So they need to know who you are. I guess they just extended the system to all content for simplicity.

Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#17

Post by kacamak »

afandian wrote: post #13

I commented on the BBC website but I might as well post it here too: As a proud listener, viewer and supporter of the BBC, this is one part that seems really unfortunate. Why should I need an account to listen to BBC content? All the pages on the BBC website that pretend to answer this question are evasive and dodge the question. What do you have to hide? Please re-consider. Allow your content to be made available vi…

>As a proud listener, viewer and supporter of the BBC

Jesus christ

Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#18

Post by afandian »

chrisseaton wrote: post #16
afandian wrote: post #13

I commented on the BBC website but I might as well post it here too: As a proud listener, viewer and supporter of the BBC, this is one part that seems really unfortunate. Why should I need an account to listen to BBC content? All the pages on the BBC website that pretend to answer this question are evasive and dodge the question. What do you have to hide? Please re-consider. Allow your content to be made available vi…

> Why should I need an account to listen to BBC content? It doesn't apply to audio of course, but watching BBC video content now requires you to be a licence payer doesn't it? So they need to know who you are. I guess they just extended the system to all content for simplicity.

Correct. TV licenses apply to TV content.

We don't have radio licenses any more. You don't need a TV license to listen to radio.

> I guess they just extended the system to all content for simplicity.

The 'iPlayer' app (web and native) is entirely different to the 'iPlayer Radio' and 'Sounds' apps. It's not simple to add auth to apps totally unrelated to TV.

Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#19

Post by afandian »

kacamak wrote: post #17
afandian wrote: post #13

I commented on the BBC website but I might as well post it here too: As a proud listener, viewer and supporter of the BBC, this is one part that seems really unfortunate. Why should I need an account to listen to BBC content? All the pages on the BBC website that pretend to answer this question are evasive and dodge the question. What do you have to hide? Please re-consider. Allow your content to be made available vi…

>As a proud listener, viewer and supporter of the BBC Jesus christ

What? There are tonnes of critics and conspiracy theorists. Look up 'TV licensing' on YouTube. I am not one of those.

I am very grateful that we have Radio 3, 4 and various podcasts. The news is generally balanced and generally of high quality. I think that's reasonable contextualization for the comment.

Re: Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial radio

#20

Post by chrisseaton »

afandian wrote: post #18
chrisseaton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I need an account to listen to BBC content? It doesn't apply to audio of course, but watching BBC video content now requires you to be a licence payer doesn't it? So they need to know who you are. I guess they just extended the system to all content for simplicity.

Correct. TV licenses apply to TV content. We don't have radio licenses any more. You don't need a TV license to listen to radio. > I guess they just extended the system to all content for simplicity. The 'iPlayer' app (web and native) is entirely different to the 'iPlayer Radio' and 'Sounds' apps. It's not simple to add auth to apps totally unrelated to TV.

I meant maybe the backend is the same? They probably have one content delivery system.
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