iHeartRadio Canada's Killer Screens & Gadgets App

By David Farrell

Since launching the iHeartRadio mobile app 14 months ago, Bell Media has trounced its competition in just about every category you care to name and is now the dominant screen and gadget player in the market.

This week, the company  released an updated edition of the player app that adds compatibility with Apple Watch, Apple CarPlay, Android Wear, Android Auto, and Sonos wireless speaker networks.

Describing its content-rich player as the “fastest-growing music service in Canada”, Bell Media reports iHeartRadio averages 1.8 million active online listeners monthly since launching in October 2016. The service also boasts a complement of 1,230 radio stations across all formats including sports, news/talk, ethnic, gospel, and comedy, One can also slice and dice to fine tune by music genres.

Unlike nearest competitor Radioplayer with its no-frills menu advertising 500 radio stations, the iHeartRadio Canada app is also home to 10,000 podcasts, a large number of commercial-free music playlists that are genre specific, a growing catalogue of unique music content, and a website that is constantly updated with smartly-written pop culture content.

There’s also the just-launched exclusive-audio component called Secret Sessions that debuted Dec. 1 with Neil Young’s Omemee livestream concert that had 250,000+ people listening online before the show started at 8 pm ET. The same concert airs on the CTV network this Sunday, starting at 9 pm EST.

Users should note that the app update now requires users to create a Bell Media login.