iHeart: Radio, Podcasts, Music Reviews

Loved iHeart on my Windows Phone, installed it when I was forced to switch to iPhone (which has been an inferior user experience in almost every way - it can’t even do autocorrect as well as the WP, but I digress), and it was pretty similar throughout the fall of 2017... logged in today, December, to find everything changed. I can’t figure out how to get to my favorite artist-based station (can find artist in search, but there doesn’t seem to be a station option anymore?) can’t find the Recently Played Songs list once I’m playing a station. It’s fine to change things, but not in such an extreme way that it appears so nonsensical to even fairly on-top-of-things users that they can’t easily find the features that are important to them. I don’t know if it was a web app before, but it must be because I don’t recall downloading an update and everything is just a little off, not polished and smooth like a native app would be. I expected that sort of thing on a minority platform like WP, but it’s really disappointing to have a worse experience on a brand new iPhone. Anyway, iHeart is in need of some major organizing/UI changes before it can match the user experience of previous versions. If I have to put in hours curating my stations (which looks like the direction this is going), as opposed to having a variety of stations that are good, just need minor tweaks to be great, I’d might as well use Pandora!

I would have given it a five star BC I simply love being too listen to my home rock station when I'm working BC I work out of town most of time. But for some crazy reason lately it has started at 100% volume, even just now I got a head start on it and began working it down to about 60 % for it just to jump right back full blast even though I was holding down on volume button. Now I really can't explain how out why it would be turning down and almost to the half mark just for it to jump to the full volume while I'm still holding on the volume but this is not some thing that I can take or tolerate at 615 am nor will my boss's or work mates at this time in the morning and hell it could give some one a heart attack when u go from nor hearing a thing where a needle could be able to be heard hitting the floor. But you could say every one is awake today after this Bluetooth box going off. Please let me know what could and out can be done and if it's anything to do on my part in really sorry for not given the extra star but I had the volume working down for it to start over. Thanks and please have this fixed or fixed for me. Have no complaints about anything else so everyone download iHeart and listen to your favorite tubes so day and all the time for free.

I was charged $5.99 for a subscription that I was “tricked” into signing up for. I canceled the subscription within minutes of discovering that I had signed up for it, but ended up being charged anyway. I went to the online help on the iHeartRadio app to verify that my subscription was canceled and there is no unsubscribe button to hit. I then emailed iHeartRadio and received this response. “iHeartRadio Customer Support does not internally handle subscriptions processed through Apple. However, if you need to cancel your subscription, you can do so by following the procedure below:”

I folloedthe procedure “below” only to get to a dead end. I sure hope I don’t get charged again, I guess I will have to open up a dispute through my credit card company at this point. In the future I will be very very careful what buttons that I tap. It’s a shame that iHeart gets updated and changes around so much that it is unfamiliar if you don’t use it every single day. Through the many updates I have also lost my favorite stations and my saved stations, and it gets really frustrating.

It really is a good app. On the plus side, it is efficient with band usage if you have a limited internet plan. It is stable, with good buffering (I have lousy internet in my area so this is vital to me).
It has a lot of content, including podcasts galore that can be downloaded.
The minus, for which I deduct the stars has been to do with the ads. (I know, I could subscribe, but the monthly is too high for what I am listening too. Maybe some day someone can develop some sort of tiered subscriptions for those of us who just listen to limited content).
I listen to a 24 hr news show with commentary. I grew up listening to KFI640 Los Angeles every morning. I don’t begrudge this app for slipping in a couple of ads here and there, but you step right over THE PROGRAM ITSELF! Your ads should step on top of their ads, not the program. I want the whole news, not just the commentary. That’s what I chose, and it infuriates me when you cut the program off for a crappy 7-11 add, for which I will NEVER set foot in as my blood pressure rises, every time I see the sign and am reminded it’s going to INTERRUPT the program I am listening to in the morning. this app could program the timing of their ads better than this.

Almost but not quite 5🌟, would have kept my monthly subscription but it’s way too costly. For just radio I thought, but considering it’s only $15 or so it’s not that bad. It would be great for a disc jockey (DJ) or a wedding event you can actually set up your own play lists so it can just continue playing continuously. Unless you feel the need to have the DJ interact with you like your in a pub or event to interact with the crowd. I’m sure that if you had issues to where you didn’t have a DJ show up for work then this would work for most small town or small scale clubs that’s holding only 50/75 people or so. I will say that most of the time I am able to find just about anything I want to listen when I had the subscription. And I didn’t have to listen to commercials. It’s really nice cause if you are a big music fan who buys a lot of tracks per month then I would just personally purchase a subscription to the iHeartRadio app. It’s just that cool. But being that I don’t buy that much music and I just couldn’t see spending that kind of money per month.

Edit: It seems like all of the other problems I list below are gone now, due to the fact that I can’t get iHeart to play ANY music now. None of my stations work, they all constantly have a loading symbol, and where the artist’s other songs/info are, it says, “Artist Profile is not available at this time”. iHeart is completely useless to me at this point because it doesn’t do anything, and this started today only a few hours ago. This can’t be a phone problem because I have the latest iOS on a brand new iPhone 8. I’m hoping this will be fixed soon.

I've used iHeart for a few years, and I've discovered many new artists and songs through iHeart. However, I've been experiencing a few problems lately. My biggest problem is that sometimes iHeart will refresh in the middle of a song, and not just pause it, but get rid of the song completely. I'm not sure if I can fix this in my phone settings or if it's an app issue, but this has never happened before. Another issue is that some ads with sound play at the same time as a song, which is obviously annoying. Overall, it is a good app and does what it promises, but with a few bugs.

I really enjoy listening while working or just enjoying the show.
Because I’m a new listener I do find it hard to navigate around the “Stuff” material. The list is so long that I find myself getting lost in the scrolling. It would be very helpful to divide the listening segments into groups, such as years of dates. That way you could find your place easier. I have recommended the show to friends but they all have trouble finding a particular podcast that I recommended.

I also find it interesting that the earlier segments that date from 2010, which were hosted by a guy and gal had a different point of view than the more recent segments hosted by the two guys. (Sorry they are great but I can’t remember their names) I enjoy the male point of view that comes across but the difference is noticeable to me. Maybe they could throw in a female cohost once in a while.

I really thought I’d struck gold when i-heart radio was commercial free without a fee. Then it happened, they now charge for commercial free and the free station is littered with commercials that are louder and obnoxious in between the music I love to listen to each day. It’s sad it’s about the money and nothing is sacred anymore without a profit motive. The commercials can’t be manually jumped over and they are louder than the volume of the music. They interfere with atmosphere of the songs being played. I manually reduced the volume so I don’t have to listen to the drivel of each commercial played. Then they put you through a torturous video commercial at startup before you get to listen to your favorite music.
Honestly, I can’t even remember one of their commercial sponsors except for the monotone , “Cars for kids “ that I muted until it goes over. We are so mercifully pelted with commercials these days that I don’t honestly remember any commercial I hear. If I’m going to by something, I use a search engine to find what I’m in need of and not brainwashed into buying something from an obnoxious repetitive commercial. If anything, I’m repelled by the commercials and boycott their products. Thank you for the opportunity to vent my displeasure with today’s technology held hostage by advertising ad-nauseum. Yuck!

I am completely loving iHeart. Features that I love is that it plays in the background of any other app. This is the best especially when using Waze in the car. I can still get the verbal directions from waze and the volume of iHeartRadio goes lower but doesn’t shut off! Also, when I close iHeart mid podcast, the podcast restarts automatically upon returning to iHeart . This also continues playing when minimized and when the phone is locked.

The only feature that I would love to see change is the order in which the podcasts play. Instead of going up the list, example #4 to #5, the podcasts will play going down the list from #5 to #4. This means that you have to physically go into iHeart and click on the next podcast on the list. This is something that I hate doing, particularly when driving as it’s dangerous! I would love for iHeartRadio to fix this issue so that I can play a podcast list, and let it run up the list without needing to reopen iHeart and physically tap the next on the list.

Besides this issue, I love iHeart for podcasts!

Literally the clunkiest app I’ve ever used. If you can listen to your favorite podcasts on another app, do it! Unfortunately the Elvis Duran Show is owned by iHeartRadio, so I have to use iHeart to listen to their replay shows and podcasts. It takes forever just to open iHeart and get to the show I want to listen to. I keep iHeart open if I have to pause for a bit, and usually I try to come back later and listen... only to find that iHeart has closed itself and I have to go and search for the podcast I was listening to. A lot of times it doesn’t save my place, so I have to fast forward to where I was. iHeart has TRICKED ME into accidentally signing up for their premium, paid version by randomly bringing up the thumbprint authorization even after I had closed out of the ad. I’ve also tried listening to some of my favorite shows “live” and it constantly cuts out. I’ve had iHeart for years and despite going through many updates, it still is just NOT great. I don’t know how anyone can give it more than 3 stars. Either make my favorite shows available on the Apple podcasts app, or make this stupid app BETTER.

I use iHeart because it gives me access to older podcasts than apple’s podcast app does, but iHeart is absolutely infuriating! Sometimes the controls will be available from the home screen or the control center, but not always. Sometimes the controls have play/pause, skip forward 30s and skip backward 15s, but sometimes it’s play/pause, skip forward 30s and 3 bars that allow you to skip to the next/last podcast and maybe remove it from your list of favorites (can’t remember the last feature). The fact that iHeart isn’t always recognized as playing means that I can’t use my headphone shortcuts to play/pause like I normally do, and have to go in to open iHeart if I want to pause, which is super inconvenient when someone comes in to talk to you but you’re listening to a podcast and have to dig around to finally make iHeart pause and by that point you’ve either missed an indeterminate amount of podcast or you’ve missed half of what the person was saying to you.
Overall this seems like something that an app developer whose primary focus is audio should be really on top of, and it is pretty poor development not to have this figured out in my opinion.

I first got a iHeartRadio as a free app when I first got my mobile device. It was free it was fun and the music was good because I could listen to it anywhere. That was about three years ago, now so much of the free things have been replaced by paid services that if I want to change anything that I had set up three years ago I can’t do it unless I pay them their fees to change anything on my accounts. You really have to love progress. On top of that because my mobile device is constantly logged on it doesn’t recognize the passwords I set up before they changed their site so now when I go to login online to try and change things it doesn’t recognize me. It’s a blast trying to reset my passwords and prove I’m not a freaking robot, great job iHeartRadio. I think it’s pretty funny that I have to prove I’m not a robot to reset my password but they can send automated email responses to folks. I’ve had these kind of problems before and they’ll send a generated email that says hey look up these corresponding posts on the forums to see if they match your problems. It’s all fun and games until the autistic guy wants to talk to a person then everybody hides behind a computer screen, if you find this funny awesome, if you don’t, fix it. It’s just one guys opinion.

I was going to dl the iheartradio Free app & thought I would check out the reviews before doing so. I was quite intrigued by the various array of issues that people pointed out, so I kept reading... first few reviews, I saw the response to the Reviewer’s issues by iheartradio was that they wanted to resolve whatever issues they were having & to please contact (email) them, so they can further address the problem(s). I thought, “Wow, they really do want to make sure that the problem is resolved for that person & seem to be taking that extra step in doing so.” Then I kept reading....I would have to say that each & every review that I read, the response was always the same , “pls contact (email) us, so that we can look into this issue and help you resolve it. “ Then I realized, why wouldn’t they address the issue or at least write down a foot note to the review,addressing the outcome & HOW it was corrected!!! I decided NOT to dl iHeart at this time bc I’m not if all the issues written about were ADDRESSED & CORRECTED ?? It’s great that you guys address the concerns and ask people to contact you for help -but how about letting the rest of us reading the reviews know how things turned out? Were the issues corrected & MORE IMPORTANTLY, How??

I’ll start by saying I love the IHeartRadio app. I’ve been using it for almost 10 years now. It’s great because I travel for work and when in my truck in areas where there’s no local stations I can still have music. Plus I love all the podcasts. For instance I listen to the Alan Cox show that’s airs in Cleveland Ohio. They have all the shows from the past year so even if I miss a day or two I can go back and listen.

However yesterday when I opened iHeart I had a popup window asking me to subscribe to a monthly trial. I tried to close the window and it automatically enrolled me in monthly subscriptions. I’m amazed apps can even get away with this. You basically tricked me into getting the subscription. You took advantage of the in-app purchase and since I have touch ID enabled there’s no way to avoid it. Judging by the reviews and the post on the Apple forums this is happening to a lot of people. I was able to contact Apple and let them know what was going on and have the charges blocked. I shouldn’t have had to go through this process at all. I feel bad for all the people that aren’t going to realize it happened and be billed. If this happens again I will delete iHeart.

So done with the ads and the greed of this app/Clear Channel. Ads are a priority and now it’s just a glitchy ad filled experience. The greed of this app/clear channel is disgusting.

PLEASE understand who this app actually is. Understand their legacy. this app literally owns all the radio stations. They don’t HAVE to make you watch ads to make iHeart free! They do not have to charge you for an “ad free experience”. They already own the stations. They’ve already sold those advertisements. You are already listening to the ads. That’s why radio is free. There is NO ad free experience, period. They charge the advertisers for air time and they charge the listeners to listen to the ads. Then they try to guilt people into paying to listen by saying the ads keep iHeart free! They are getting paid on ALL ends and would love you to believe they are some small start up that just wants to help you access content. this app is a HUGE GREEDY CORPORATION that already owns ALL the radio stations. The amount of money they make through ALL the advertising they already sell on the air is completely unimaginable! GREED and way to much control! Shameful and terrifying!

I recently jumped from apple’s podcast system to this to hear my favorite radio podcast John and Ken because this app stopped having the Friday show on the Apple podcast stream. A move to get you to the this app app. Well I’m here and the podcast features are not that robust. The per episode playback order always goes newest to oldest and you can’t turn it the other way around. For catching up you have to remember that or you end up hearing the show out of order which is annoying if you just let the run to the next episode. No sleep timer available which helps you not run into other shows if you fall asleep listening. I got through eight episodes that way in one night. The skip features could be better and should be configurable. Get the settings better and I’ll rate you higher.
Radio play of live content is great. Sound is clear.

I listen to iHeart all the time and I love the concept but there are minor things that should be done to make it better. I love the podcasts but It does not seem to be fully compatible with I phone. The 11 pro is the first I phone I’ve ever had and I heart restarts or shuts off and won’t start replaying if I make or receive a call. I have to go into iHeart and start it back up. I’m disappointed with the selection of songs by some popular artists. Rammstein is very well known and played on I heart stations across the country. I am subscribed to the plus feature that you pay to be able to listen to full albums or save songs to play in your own playlist. They have 2 Rammstein albums neither of which include their popular songs. They have tons of crap bands and music no one listens to but lacking in music that is classic. There is no other way to make suggestions than write a review or I would’ve just contacted someone there with my feedback.

More stable than the older version but uses battery at a MUCH higher rate than the prior version on my iPhone X. I usually listen to iHeart 7-9 hrs per day and the battery was at 40%-55% at the end of the day. Now it’s 5% and the battery log shows it’s all this app Radio. I wish I could go back to the old version. (Similar issues using cell data while it’s connected to WiFi.)

Since writing this review (previously 4 stars, since downgraded) the developer contacted me. They sent me the following “workarounds:”
“ Could you try going into your settings on your phone and check under apps and notifications - iHeartRadio - useage to make sure iHeartRadio isn't excluded from power saving features.” Well, DUH!! And then this:

“ For iPhone X users, please follow the steps below:

Swipe from the bottom of the screen and hold your thumb on the screen until it shows all of your open apps.
Hold down on the iHeartRadio app until you see a red minus symbol appear at the top left corner of iHeart
Click the red minus symbol to exit and close the iHeartRadio app”.
IMO, this is utterly unacceptable and an insulting ask. When I stop playing and/or close iHeart I expect it to STOP ALL FUNCTIONS without any further BS. It does not. The old version did and worked tolerably well. I should never have “updated” it. I have deleted it.

Avoid iHeart.

Couldn’t be happier with content and stations. On the flip side, it will play the same ad over and over (consecutively) while there is a station break. Also, horrible experience with local employee. Two local stations, only, were not playing. I called in to local office and receptionist who you see to claim prizes answered and was horrific. Insisted it was not their office and problem was on my end and hung up. I called corporate who gave excellent customer service said the 2 stations I inquired about were in fact down. I called back the local station, to let her know what corporate said in case other people called in and she literally called me a liar. Hung up on me. I tried calling back numerous times and she literally would not say anything and would pick up phone and slam it down, during regular business hrs. Called corporate back in hopes my conversation with local was recorded. They were extremely friendly, and promised to address with mgmt but I never received a follow-up to their investigation, as requested.

Back when I had my car, I was paying $30/month for Sirius XM expressly for the purpose of listening to one Casey Kasem show each week. Someone on Facebook had suggested that I login to iHeartRadio and simply search “Casey Kasem”, and I found a channel that streams just American Top 40 shows from the 70s and 80s 24/7! Being only 25, I was never able to listen to his shows live, and Casey had passed just as I started getting into his shows in 2014. I had previously only kept iHeartRadio on my iPhone and iPad to be able to stream a station out of Grand Rapids, Michigan in November and December each year when they switch to Christmas music. Needless to say, I stream American Top 40 through iHeartRadio at least 1-2 hours a day, and often listen to it for extended periods while at work. Thank you iHeartRadio for making it possible for me to listen to an icon I didn’t get to know until it was too late.

I have tried to change my settings and preferences many times and iHeart never seams to save or removed them even though I save them and confirm they were saved.
There were many times that I could not click on or open the options on the screen...so I had to pretty much just go with whatever the/they recommended. I am not very particular about my music, so for the most part that didn’t bother me as I can always type in a search and find things that way....but my preferences were not remember or retained and I completed the genre picks and set my preferences MULTIPLE times.
MY MAIN COMPLAINT THOUGH.......IS.....
Since I am FORCED to accept their rules and complete liability and responsibility just by using iHeart ....Given the fact that the “terms of use” and “license agreements” and “hold harmless” agreements that you read and accept if you choose to use the application...are so strict and unaccountable on I HEART RADIOS part and clearly only represent and protect their interests and companies and their chosen advertisers and third party subsidiaries and/or partners......I REFUSE to overlook the glitches that were so present throughout the entire experience. Especially since the glitches involved almost deliberately refusing to accommodate or acknowledge MY PERSONAL preferences and choices and right to choose the music I like.

I love radio and I mean real radio. IHeartRadio definitely fills my plate with what I love. I traveled for work and found great stations and shows that I continue listening to. It’s great to tune into a station from home when I’m hundreds of miles away and listening to what’s going on in my local area. They also have great streaming stations and the “Mixtape” is awesome. I didn’t give it five stars because after years with stock radios my wife got me a JVC stereo for my truck which had this awesome iHeartRadio feature. After multiple tries of connecting I went to the iHeartRadio support and the feature is no longer supported by iHeartRadio. I know I can just listen to it through usb or Bluetooth but I was looking forward to this feature on my new radio. Now I noticed that they have IHeartRadio “Auto” app. So now I have to have two apps ?? I actually pay for this one and I’m thinking of stopping because it’s a little frustrating.