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New BBC radio app serves over a million downloads in less than a month
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 13 August 2015
More than a million BBC radio shows have been downloaded to the Corporation’s new fangled iPlayer Radio app since it went live just under a month ago.
As previously reported, for the first time, as of last month, users of iPlayer Radio could download shows to their devices so to allow offline listening. Previously – unlike the TV version of iPlayer and most streaming music services – iPlayer Radio would only work while the device was connected to the internet.
The development created a temporary stir amongst fans of tedious copyright law technicalities, because someone pointed out that if a radio programme containing music was actually downloaded to a device – rather than just streamed – that would exploit both the so called mechanical and performing rights in the songs said programme contained.
Actually, technically a stream does that too, but let’s not dwell on that fact, because it was only now that this ‘we’re exploiting both mechanical and performing rights’ issue was raised in the context of online radio.
It was an issue because it meant the BBC needed a licence from both performing rights collecting society PRS and mechanical rights society MCPS. Which the PRS For Music organisation is fully equipped to provide, except that a handful of songwriters, while members of PRS, are not allied to MCPS.
Which meant songs from Neil Young, The Doors, Journey and Bonnie Rait were banned from the BBC airwaves, in case a programme containing one of those songs slipped through to the new iPlayer app without licence, constituting copyright infringement. Except a subsequent deal with a publish repping three of those songwriters meant it was a very short-lived ban.
Though, looking at the list of Top 20 downloads within the iPlayer Radio app ecosystem so far, I’m not sure all that flapping over music rights was necessary, given only five are music-based programmes, and that includes ‘Desert Island Discs’ and the ‘Proms’. It was mainly Radio 4 listeners who were eager for off-line listening functionality, it would seem.
And now a quote from the BBC’s Andrew Scott: “We knew from the success of our podcast service that there was a demand to download BBC radio and music content to listen to whenever they wanted too. But hitting one million downloads [so soon] far surpassed our expectations. We’re looking forward to bringing audiences even more features like this over the coming months”.
