One of the most influential forces in music, the British Broadcasting Corporation, has launched a new free app that provides extensive content from the broadcaster’s various properties — television, radio, and online — such as Live Lounge and In Concert sessions from BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2, Jools Holland appearances, exclusive interviews, curated playlists, and live audio and video performances. The iOS and Android app, simply called BBC Music, will certainly draw comparisons to Apple Music. After a user sets his or her preferences, the app will make recommendations and create a personalized feed.
The app also integrates with Spotify, Deezer, and YouTube. Users can create their own playlists of songs from the curated playlists, and export them to one of the aforementioned streaming services to listen to them in their entirety (BBC Music lets you sample clips of songs). For BBC Radio listeners, they can search for music that was aired in the past seven days.
The BBC Music app evolved from BBC Playlister (no longer available), which carries over core features but attempts to make things easier for listeners. The BBC will continue to build out the app with new features based on user feedback, it says.
“The BBC Music app lets you get straight to the music you love, from In Concert and Live Lounge sessions to Jools Holland, with the tap of a button. This is just the start for us, and we want to hear from users over time to make the BBC Music app the best that it can be, so they can enjoy music from across the BBC — whenever and wherever they are,” says Director of BBC Music Bob Shennan.
According to the BBC, the new app is part of a digital music initiative that includes a new BBC Music website and a BBC Music component within its iPlayer app; the latter has exclusive content that’s only available through iPlayer, in addition to radio streaming. It stresses that it’s not the music discovery product — which also offers playable playlists — that it announced in 2015; that product, the BBC says, is still in development.
BBC Music will be available in the app stores, although it hasn’t appeared when we checked.
