TuneIn, ‘Swiss Army’ Radio App, Launches Premium Service With Major League Baseball, Premier

Major League Baseball – TuneIn Premium subscribers can listen to home and away feeds for every game, from Spring Training to the World Series.

It streams songs directly from its servers and the DJs don’t have to select these songs as TuneIn will find songs that you like based on your listening habits. Radio app TuneIn is hoping to change that.

In addition to launching in the United States, Tunein is making their premium service available to listeners in the UK as well as Canada, with prices set at £5.99 a month and $8.99 CAD a month respectively.

While it might be better known for streaming radio stations online, TuneIn is taking on its rivals with a new Premium tier that gives you a little bit of everything.

The service, which hosts thousands of live radio streams and news broadcasts, is rolling out a new subscription service Tuesday that takes the commercials out of radio. It’s unclear whether TuneIn shares some of its revenue with radio stations as you could call this feature an ad blocker for radio.

The TuneIn app is available on most platforms and its free service allows users to listen to unlimited ad-supported radio stations. Th goal, he says, is to continue to add more sports leagues (TuneIn Premium also offers access to some broadcasts from Bundesliga and Barclays Premier League) to the lineup, though he declined to discuss which ones may be next.

TuneIn Premium removes the element people dislike most about traditional radio: all the commercials. Also behind the paywall will be 600 commercial-free music stations from around the world and 40,000 audio books from publishers such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Scholastic. There are also 16 language learning programs available if you want to brush up on your Spanish or Mandarin. To get commercial-free radio, TuneIn is actually having existing stations provide it with separate streams that have music in place of their ad breaks; the local station still handles the programming, so the additional tracks should fit in with what the station is already playing.

TuneIn Premium remains a good move for the company.