NPR One • Hacker News Board

Re: NPR One

#51

Post by 27182818284 » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:16 PM UTC

dctoedt wrote: post #9

If this catches on, it might disintermediate (EDIT: or accelerate the existing disintermediation of) the local public radio stations, which will then lose donations, which will then be less able to do local reporting. (Of course I'm not sure our Houston public radio station does all that much local reporting to start with.)

>If this catches on, it might disintermediate the local public radio stations,

Just glancing at the app, I don't think there is anything here that you couldn't currently do in the NPR app ecosystem. For example there is already an NPR app that lets you choose radio stations or just programs from around the world and a lot of local stations built their own, independent app (though in my experience those are lower quality)

Re: NPR One

#52

Post by jessriedel » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:16 PM UTC

ruytlm wrote: post #43

This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app? This is the biggest problem with audio apps these days - you get everyone trying to make a similar thing, and because they're all competing they all try and lock each other out of their own products. What would be so much better is a content-agnostic platform, that'll let you play whatever the hell you want - whether it's music, talk ra…

I agree with the annoyance of everyone and their mother wanting their own app, but NPR seems like a big enough piece of a lot of folks entertainment/news lives that it makes sense. (I say this as someone who never listens to NPR.)

The question is whether the product is used frequently enough and can actually make use of a custom interface, compared to whether a more generic app would actually provide value. If I would use the generic app to listen to NPR 95% of the time, then it probably makes more sense to dedicate the app to NPR and just use a web browser for the other 5%.

Reversing XKCD, it's probably better to think of apps as slightly heavy and custom websites. There's really not much loss in having lots more apps so long as they're lighweight. Throw them all into a folder on your homescreen.

http://xkcd.com/1367/

Re: NPR One

#53

Post by bluthru » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:23 PM UTC

minivan wrote: post #27

Cool, hopefully it will replace the All Songs Considered audio stream (which is great). Side note: Is it just me, or this "scroll to reveal stuff in steps" is a bit frustrating? It seems to be used more and more often and I am sometimes puzzled by the fact that I'm missing the scrolling step. I try scrolling and get either too far (which shows half an image coming from above) or don't get anywhere (which makes me scr…

Cranking an animation... this doesn't feel like the future.

Re: NPR One

#54

Post by javaun » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

ruytlm wrote: post #43

This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app? This is the biggest problem with audio apps these days - you get everyone trying to make a similar thing, and because they're all competing they all try and lock each other out of their own products. What would be so much better is a content-agnostic platform, that'll let you play whatever the hell you want - whether it's music, talk ra…

I worked on this at NPR back it when it was called the Infinite Player. We'd envisioned NPR branded apps as well as integrations into other platforms (mobile, connected cars) and potentially other apps. We architected the underlying APIs with this in mind, so what you seek will probably happen at some point. At launch though, NPR wanted the pop of a branded offering, and I think they've got it.

Re: NPR One

#55

Post by sdillingham » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

gee_totes wrote: post #12

TwiztidK wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong feeling that they will charge for it eventually. Maybe the app will ask them to donate as they use it?

I have a strong feeling that when your local station's pledge drive begins, the app will use your location data to generate notifications about donating, which you'll be able to do through the app. At least, that's how I would do it. NPR is missing out on a big donation opportunity by not taking advantage of an app store's built-in in-app purchase/donation infrastructure.

Unfortunately Apple's ToS explicitly forbid charitable donations inside of apps, which is exactly what an IAP donation would be. Public radio's hands are tied unless Apple changes it's policies.

Re: NPR One

#56

Post by TylerE » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

rglover wrote: post #2

Super cool. Only thing, though, is that they should be charging for this. Seeing as how NPR stations rely on listener donations, this seems like a missed opportunity to earn some extra revenue and bolster the budget for stations.

There actually isn't any such thing as an "NPR Station". NPR is not a broadcaster. They are a content-producer. There are stations that are NPR members that carry lots of NPR content, but they are free to also carry local content they produce, content they license from other syndicates (e.g. PRI, American Public Media, PRX)

Re: NPR One

#57

Post by KC8ZKF » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:28 PM UTC

ruytlm wrote: post #43

This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app? This is the biggest problem with audio apps these days - you get everyone trying to make a similar thing, and because they're all competing they all try and lock each other out of their own products. What would be so much better is a content-agnostic platform, that'll let you play whatever the hell you want - whether it's music, talk ra…

Podcasts are a content-agnostic platform. They've been around for a while, the software is easy to use, they're easy to find. NPR, NYT, ESPN and many others have all had podcasts for quite a while.

If you want live radio, you can stream from mobile Safari. I'm not sure about others. Music, of course, has always been available. Since before smart phones, even.

In short, you don't need these apps any more than most other apps.

Re: NPR One

#58

Post by x1798DE » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #45

x1798DE wrote: post #6

I don't understand why this needs to be an app. I listen to many things that aren't NPR, and I don't want to switch between BeyondPod and NPR One just to get some sort of curated list. This reminds me of a few years ago where a bunch of podcasts were offering personalized apps that just downloaded the archives and maybe some extra content. I might have paid for the extra content, but I didn't need an app on my phone…

Perhaps you can personalize it further than just by show. I've often wished there was an easy way to subscribe to Nina Totenberg's legal reports. I enjoy them, but I don't want to subscribe to all of All Things Considered to make sure I don't miss them.

Well that was my point. I was assuming you can do some sort of curated-feature situation. Whatever customization the app offers, the output is basically just a list of NPR episodes and links to a server hosting them. If you wrote a server-side application that generates custom RSS feeds per-user, managed using a web panel (or a plugin for existing podcast clients), you'd essentially get the same feature set, but it would be compatible with your preferred audio backend.

Re: NPR One

#59

Post by sehrope » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

ruytlm wrote: post #43

This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app? This is the biggest problem with audio apps these days - you get everyone trying to make a similar thing, and because they're all competing they all try and lock each other out of their own products. What would be so much better is a content-agnostic platform, that'll let you play whatever the hell you want - whether it's music, talk ra…

> This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app?

I can't comment on this new app yet but I'm a near daily user of the regular NPR app (which I think is officially called "NPR news"). It's way better than any generic radio app I've tried.

Besides listening to the individual local stations, you can also get the latest news (the ~4-minute hourly blurb), can create playlists of entire shows (without the interludes, i.e. just the content), and built-in news articles (for reading, not listening). I've even used the local NPR station finder to help me tune an analog radio when in a new city where I'm not familiar with the local stations.

It'd take quite a bit of agreement on content licensing and data formats to have anything like that be as usable as the NPR app across multiple content providers.

> Seriously - why does everyone assume that if I want to listen to e.g. NPR, I only want to listen to NPR?

Well some of us do :D

Re: NPR One

#60

Post by javaun » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:30 PM UTC

dctoedt wrote: post #9

If this catches on, it might disintermediate (EDIT: or accelerate the existing disintermediation of) the local public radio stations, which will then lose donations, which will then be less able to do local reporting. (Of course I'm not sure our Houston public radio station does all that much local reporting to start with.)

Concerns around disintermediation and what they stations call "bypass" ( NPR delivering audio direct to consumers and bypassing terrestrial FM) is what prevented this from launching earlier, not the tech or UX concerns. They had to launch with a plurality of stations, localizations was required, and they had to work donations into the mix. Donations is particularly challenging since there is no one donation form (every station is independent, each has their own form/account, and no one would agree to a central account powered by, say Stripe or whatever). They couldn't launch an MVP like Swell, they had to go live with way more. That said, public radio has its strengths, one of which is that they own their content.