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FYI

iHeartRadio Canada's Killer Screens & Gadgets App

Bell Media has trounced its competition in just about every category you care to name with its iHeart Radio app. Its success is attributable to unique content, like Shakey's Sunday night concert, and a multi-platform marketing campaign.

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.

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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.

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Anne Murray performing on June 17, 1986, in Dallas.
Mark Perlstein/Getty Images

Anne Murray performing on June 17, 1986, in Dallas.

Chart Beat

Chart Rewind: In 1986, Anne Murray’s Fellow Canadians Cemented Her ‘Forever’ Legacy

The smooth alto vocalist topped Hot Country Songs with "Now and Forever (You & Me)."

When Nova Scotia native Anne Murray attained the top spot on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart dated April 24, 1986, it marked the only time in her career that two noted Canadian producers, both from British Columbia, pitched in on the project.

David Foster (Kenny Rogers, Whitney Houston) guided just one cut on Murray’s 10-track Something To Talk About album, created from a melody he cowrote with Jim Vallance (Tina Turner, Glass Tiger), a frequent Bryan Adams cowriter. They mostly had just a topline and chords when they introduced it to Murray, who then called Nashville songwriter Randy Goodrum (Murray’s “You Needed Me,” Steve Perry’s “Oh Sherrie,” Toto’s “I’ll Be Over You”) to concoct some lyrics.

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