Audacy: Radio & Sports Talk Reviews

I use Audacy primarily to listen to WFAN’s sports talk content. I could listen on the radio, but my schedule makes it more convenient to listen via streaming. I have two main frustrations: 1) is difficulty finding content, like Richard Neer’s Saturday and Sunday broadcasts, on Audacy . If I use the search feature in Audacy to search “Richard Neer” or “Neer” nothing comes up. So instead, I have to Google, put in “Richard Neer” and search thru several results to find a link that will bring me to his this app content, usually via an Apple podcasts link. This method usually works, but not always, and it’s cumbersome. Frustration number 2 is more serious: Audacy frequently freezes or drops out, especially at commercial breaks, and if I try to rewind during a delayed stream, Audacy often takes me to the live station stream, and it’s impossible to go back to find my place. For example, I was listening to Neer interviewing someone this morning, and I tried to hit the “rewind 15 seconds”’button, and it took me to the live stream. I have NO PROBLEM listening to ads - I know Audacy needs to get revenue somehow. So let us listen to the ads! Instead, when I get to the ads, Audacy freezes or crashes half of the time. Fix these issues and it goes to 5 stars; as is, it’s too frustrating to rate higher than 2 stars.

Playback is sometimes fine, but other times extremely frustrating. Program playback will sometimes spontaneously stop playing, at a commercial break or just in the middle of a segment. There doesn’t appear to be a discernible pattern as to when or why this happens. When that happens and you hit play to restart, it either will not start at all, or restarts from the beginning. When it decides to restart from the beginning even though you just want playback to continue from where it spontaneously stopped, the playback timeline incorrectly shows you’re restarting at the point it froze. Very aggravating. Also, sometimes the timeline slider will not allow you to move it at all. When that happens you have to pick a different program, and then go back to the program you’re listening to, or sometimes kill and restart Audacy . In either case you need to make a mental note of where you were in the timeline slider so you can get back to the right place after restarting the program or Audacy .

The playback feature is a great feature when it works. When it doesn’t, the behavior it exhibits is very aggravating and is a bad user experience.

I spend at least 3 hours driving daily. Audacy is the only one compatible with CarPlay that offers 1010 wins, so it was a no brained, but unfortunately the CarPlay implementation is more of a gimmick than anything. Favorite radios should be the first item in the list, that, or show them as icons immediately when opening Audacy , instead with have to browse trough the screen multiple menus to select a radio. We are driving remember? Where is the usability? The worst thing with Audacy however is the black screen I get 80% of the time when I touch Audacy icon on the CarPlay screen, Audacy works but the screen is empty. The only way I have to start listening to the radio I want is holding the phone and searching for the radio I want trough it, not the screen of CarPlay because there is nothing there. This is infuriating, and not an issue with my phone or car as I thought first. I tested it with my wife and kids iPhones (we all have different models) and our two cars, and it’s always the same issue. I tested it with a friend’s car and it’s the same thing.
I’m pretty sure this is a great app as a stand-alone working with the phone, but please fix the CarPlay functionality.

Audacy used to be great. I’d listen to my local AM news station while getting ready for work in the morning and never had a problem. It would stop playing if I opened another app with sound, like a website with embedded video, but other than that playback was continuous and reliable. But after COVID and moving to working from home, I didn’t need it; I’d watch the news on tv instead. For whatever reason, I tried to use it this morning for the first time in awhile and all of a sudden (to me anyway) it won’t play in the background if I’m using another app or if the phone is locked. What in the world possessed the developers to make this change? Now Audacy is completely useless. I’m not going to drain my battery keeping my phone awake to listen to news I can just as easily get somewhere else. Change it back.

ETA: thanks for your response. While I’m still baffled as to why that functionality became optional, enabling background refresh did work.

I download Audacy at the suggestion of a friend of mine. I like it but it needs some serious accessibility improvements. Those of us that use voiceover which is a talking part of the iOS need to know what we are doing and how to get favorites. Also, the pictures that are shown on the screen aren’t labeled properly so voiceover doesn’t know how to tell those of us who are blind or visually impaired what the object on screen is. I hope that the developers of Audacy will take this feedback and give it some consideration. Maybe even write a response back to this review. I would love to talk to them. Also, our speech says that there are buttons twice. Is this true? Or is this a bug in the application when it comes to using voiceover? I am not able to get in touch with intercom‘s corporate offices to speak to them about this application so I’m hoping that someone will read this review and get back to me as previously stated.

They’re lucky I didn’t give 1 star. I only use Audacy to listen to 1 station and it’s so inconsistent, I rarely waste my time. It automatically tries to play my favorite station when I open Audacy which is fine. But half the time, it fails to load. While casually listening, it’ll randomly freeze and stop playing. But once I hit pause and play, it resumes as if there wasn’t a problem. Other times, it’ll continuously run ads for minutes until I stop it. Other times while listening to a live stream, it’ll rewind itself to the beginning of the stream without warning me. I only realize it if I’ve been listening from the beginning and start to hear things I’ve heard before. These issues could be overlooked if it weren’t such a constant occurrence. I drive for a living spending 8-14 hours a day on the road and I can rarely get through a couple hours without an issue arising. I thought when they change to this app, things would get better but it’s the same app with a new logo

This is both my most used app, and the absolute worst app I use. I stream out of market sports radio (shout out 97.1 The Ticket Detroit). It constantly crashes. It gets stuck in endless commercial loops. It goes mute, to which the only option is to start the show at the beginning, fast forward 15 seconds at a time through hours of radio until it clicks back on. It randomly doesn’t play certain shows. The new wrinkle(I assume they added this as an April fools, and due to covid-19 just forgot to shut it off) is that it plays with no audio, and the only way to get it to work is to restart my device, delete and reinstall Audacy , rinse and repeat until it decides to play. If there are any alternative options for radio streaming out there, please someone let me know. I cannot understate what a simmering kettle of goat droppings Audacy is. It was terrible years ago, and continues to get incrementally worse with each update. Pure trash. I would happily pay a few bucks for a functioning app, especially considering how frequently I use said app.

I listen to talk radio on Audacy. I would say freezes between 10 and 12 times an hour for four seconds each time.

Most times I pause to talk to someone or answer a phone call or make a phone call it doesn’t hold my place and resets. Especially on demand.

When I listen to on demand it tries to skip commercials but ends up either starting the show over or replaying the segment I had just listened to. Which is a lot of fun when you’re trying to drive let me tell you.

I also get caught in advertisement loops where I’ve heard up to 10 advertisements in a row before closing Audacy and restarting it just to get back to the live programming.

Sometimes I’ll be listening to a show and receive a phone call and Audacy doesn’t restart where I left off but when I play the program back it’ll restart at the beginning of the segment or the entire show. Then I have to try to fast forward and find the spot where it left off. Which once again is a lot of fun when you’re trying to drive. And that’s if the rewind and fast-forward functions actually work because a lot of times Audacy says it’s not connecting and everything but the play/pause button is grayed out.

When Audacy works it’s great and I love it unfortunately I would say that’s less than half the time I use it. 3 out of 10 in baseball is batting 300 and makes you an all-star. In Audacy world it makes you a failure. Please fix!

The good is I get to catch the ONLY station I listen to on here because it’s not available anywhere else. The bad is whether I’m home on wifi or on the road (truck driver) Audacy since the station switched to it has ALWAYS and CONTINUALLY lets me down because it stops like it crashes interrupting what I’m listening to. I can’t go back using the 15 sec button because that doesn’t work properly and it takes forever then that stops. Continual buffering is a huge problem also. The ugly is you guys haven’t fixed this bug yet I’ve been listening over a year and it’s never been addressed. I know the station I listen to can’t be the only problem on here. There’s got to be other people and things they listen to going through the same thing. PLEASE FIX THIS ISSUE! (maybe my bad and ugly review parts should be switched) also I’m on spectrum wifi with the highest package no issues and my cell is on 5g with Verizon and a iPhone 12 Pro max so it’s not me.

1. Right now, if you are chosing a terrestrial radio station, WXYZ, and you’re using the feature where you can View Guide to go back on the stations timeline and listen to a show from a few hours ago, it’s pretty great. Except for one thing: if you stop or go away for any reason: a phone call, you have to watch a video, or you just need to pause the audio for a while, when you return to Audacy , it only remembers your place for a few minutes! It’s maddening. It should remember your place for at least 3 hours. Or give you a choice in settings to A) Reset immediately B) Remember my place for 3 hours C) Remember my place until I change

2. I keep getting these pointless pop up windows telling me to log in. Except… I am already logged in. This happens pretty much every day. It should be able to detect if I’m logged in, and not give me a pop up if I am. This also is maddening.

I hope this app reads these and will make these changes. I’d give Audacy 5* if they fixed this stuff.

I have previously used TuneIn before Audacy but since Enter-com Communications switched all of its stations over to their app it has made my life harder and looking at the other reviews I think others too. If you are going to switch apps 1. Please tell us you are going to switch soon so we have a heads up. 2. Make sure you have great execution of Audacy you are making and make SURE the consumers like it and that it works well. Audacy has connectivity issues all the time, sometimes it will say that it is playing and I can’t hear anything or it will play then stop then start playing again. What I do appreciate is the you release app updates often. If you can fix the bugs/crashes I think you will make a lot more people happy. To all companies and people out there. If you have something that works just fine, don’t switch things up. As he saying goes “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it”. I hope anyone who reads this has a wonderful day and don’t forget to smile. :)

I’m writing this review since I actually use Audacy daily now that the put the rewind feature in. Also, I only use Audacy to listen to wfan.
They finally caught up to the times and made their content sort of on demand now with the 24 hour rewind feature. It works great, but the reason I made it 4 stars instead of 5 is the fact that when you pause it for more than a couple minutes, Audacy will not hold your place correctly. For example if I pause and come back after 10 seconds or so it’s fine, but if I pause the stream and come back 5 or 20 minutes later it will either take me to the begging of the previous segment, or the beginning of the next segment. It won’t just stay where i paused it in the middle of a program.

The only reason I use Audacy is to listen to my favorite sports talk radio shows when I’m unable to listen live. I will rewind the show to the beginning.

The problem is, the stream will quote often randomly decide to skip forward anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes. Then, when I try to rewind back to where I was, I can’t find it. Since I listen to it in the background, I’m not watching my screen to be able to know where I was at in the stream. Another problem is that MANY times I will miss something someone says and I’ll try to rewind 15 seconds, and MOST of the time I try to do that, it will rewind multiple minutes. Then I have to find my place again. Or, it will jump FORWARD 5 minutes.

Overall, Audacy is just super frustrating to use. If you listen to something live, it usually works fine. But good luck if you decide to use the rewind feature.

I unfortunately use Audacy all the time to listen to one radio station I enjoy. The rewind feature is broken frequently. Sometimes if I pause while listening to a show, as soon as I resume it jumps to live and I have to figure out where I was. Other times, I will start Audacy and an endless commercial loop will run and the station I chose will never start unless I close Audacy and re-open. It’s actually completely embarrassing that a company of this size and value can’t get the interface on their app right. It’s like the competition is twenty years ahead. Audacy is so brutal that it inspired me to write the first negative app review I’ve ever written. Since it’s the only way to stream the live radio I am looking for, I guess I will continue to use it, but it truly is an unacceptable experience. This company seems absolutely lost when it comes to making a great interface and useable app when compared to their peers.

I used this when it was Rdio and then I downloaded when it switched. Although Audacy is many times more stable than the older one was I gotta say this. I’m REALLY disappointed in the commercials. Not in having them. But In every single break in my local market I’m being spammed with the same commercial over and over and over again. To the tune of as many as 5 or 6 times in a row I hear the same commercial. Every time they break. Either it’s Olivia Munn, or the being a dad, or now the newest one which is the whole rewind that they’re doing for 9-11. I totally get the self promotion aspect of the industry. But this is so much spam that I’m seriously done using Audacy. I can’t take the same commercial 50 times and hour. Either fix this issue or sorry. You lost a customer cause I’ll go back to radio. At least there I can hear a mix of commercials

I was frustrated with tune in dad was looking for an alternative and I found this great app and service. It’s pretty reliable and not too glitchy and the features are fantastic including being able to access podcasts and stations and pretty much anything you want to have in your ears while you take long walks or long drives. I find it comforting to listen to something during the pandemic. Thank you

The only thing I wish I could do that tune in let’s you do is to continue listening while an email or text pops up and you check but I still appreciate the service and give it top marks

I love Audacy because I can listen to my favorite and my local stations, even when I am not in my home city. I despise Audacy because of the way it acts on my iPad. The jump to live button never works. It freezes constantly. Sometimes, I don’t use Audacy for a few days. When I return to Audacy , Audacy will pick up where it left off, even though I have disabled that function. I don’t want to listen to the news in my local area from three days ago, I want to listen to what is happening now. In order to do that, I have to power down my iPad, then power it back up so that everything resets on the iPad, just to listen to live radio. It’s more bother than it’s worth. And your pop ups are really, really annoying. If this doesn’t get better, I will be deleting this app and go back to SXM.

Since I upgraded to iOS 15, Audacy no longer plays unless it is on screen. I can no longer listen to the this app radio when I am checking the weather or news. When my phone goes to the lock screen, this app stops playing. I’d be grateful if either this app or Apple might get address this!

Updated review: Now, this app won’t play at all on my iPhone 11 running iOS 15. After several quits, it now gives silence even when the screen shows that it is playing. Although Audacy works fine on iOS 14, I have had to delete it from my iOS 15 phone. It’s frustrating, as one of my favorite shows is only available to stream on this app, and I can’t listen to it on my phone until you upgrade Audacy to work with iOS 15. I will try again after a week or two, but for now, this app is simply not usable on iOS 15. Please upgrade, I’ll revise this review when you do!

I downloaded this to replace my previous live radio app that is no longer supported by Apple’s App Store. (Next Radio was better, not sure why its gone).
Everything was working fine until the last update. Now Audacy drains my battery noticeably faster, you can’t switch between apps without the radio stream being cut off, you also can’t let your phone go in to “rest mode” (let the screen/battery saving feature do its job). Audacy stays open and keeps your screen on the whole time now.
I guess I’ll start looking for a radio app to replace this one.
They do soooo much advertising for Audacy, but its apparently not up to task for what most people would consider basic features. Very dissatisfied

The only way I can listen to my favorite talk shows is thru Audacy. I wish it weren’t so because Audacy is frustrating. It’ll stop playing for no reason and when I look at my phone I hope to see the play arrow but instead I often see the pause icon which would leave one to believe that it was still playing. I’ll tap the icon but nothing happens so to get it going again I often have to shut it down and restart. This has been happening even before the iOS 13 updates I fear that since they have a captive audience their commitment to quality is questionable. And now I have to listen to several commercials before they connect to the talk show so I miss a couple of minutes of dialogue and this happens even after I’ve been already been listening. I’d pay for Audacy if they would eliminate Audacy commercial.

I would give Audacy a 5 out of 5 if it did not freeze as much as it does when the device sits in the same place. The other thing that needs to be fixed when looking for radio station articles or announcements Audacy will back u out or shutdown. I know it sounds big but it is not. It makes having to restart Audacy every hr or so when played for an extended time period a pain. Also when it freezes and it is the only playing in the background in office it makes it a pain because someone is always yelling fix Audacy which disturbs the entire office. Fix these two things and I’ll change to 5 out of 5. Thanks for the good one currently. Sorry one last thing does not effect stars. Please let listeners know when not going to have sports games streaming on it. Thanks

I like Audacy and use it often. It has all the Entercom stations and ties into the website well. Only problem is a recent update seems to have broken the alarm feature, at least when I use the sleep timer in conjunction with it the night before.

I also find myself adding a lot of the Entercom stations on TuneIn Pro because Audacy isn’t as user-friendly in the car. Changing stations can be cumbersome while mobile, and I've occasionally found it loses connectivity and has trouble reconnecting when going from WiFi to cellular data. Also, Audacy seems to determine your location by IP address instead of GPS. When it look for local stations, it seems to think I'm near Chicago, but I'm halfway between St. Louis and KC.

Buffers and cuts out all the time, and won’t reconnect. I have to shut Audacy down and restart. I don’t have this problem with any other streaming service. The only reason why I even attempt to use this is because WGR 550 decided to go to this inferior product. However my patience is dwindling. How hard is it to fix a problem everyone else seems to have perfected?
Update 6months later What a surprise. Not working again this morning on either my phone or echo. Hire someone to fix this. It’s pathetic.
Update: now it seems that commercials will kick in during the program! After the commercials then the program goes to commercial....so guess what? More commercials! I’m missing whole segments of sports interviews. Congratulations.. you did it..I’m going back to an AM radio.
BTW there is no way Audacy has 4.6 stars.
Read the other reviews.

TOO MANY COMMERCIALS
I LITERALLY LISTEN FOR 8 minutes and still haven’t heard the actual RADIO STATION. Back to iHeartRadio.
Sometimes I get a call and it obviously takes precedence over Audacy and when I end the call I go back to Audacy and the radio does not continue to play either on its own because the call ended or if I’ve pressed play. No matter how long the call was. Same thing happens if a video pops up on Facebook I want to watch, I have to kill Audacy and reopen it for each instance. Slightly frustrating especially listening to my favorite morning show. No offense but iHeartRadio comes right back on, but I would like to listen local so I use it in the morning even though Kidd Kraddick Morning Show is nationally syndicated and I could listen to iHeartRadio on another station. So come on y’all! #firstworldproblems

The biggest issue with Audacy is that it doesn’t transition well between live radio and commercials. I frequently miss important contest information and fun interaction from on air hosts. The host will begin talking or it will cut to the middle of already in progress talking. Then it completely skips to the next song. This can be very frustrating since this is the only way for me to listen to my favorite station. In addition, Audacy will appear to be playing at times but you can’t hear the station.

Additional annoyances maybe unrelated to Audacy are strange, retro like commercials played between songs. I would rather have dead air than listen to them.

I like what Audacy has to offer it’s just not as smooth as it could be.

I like using Audacy to listen to radio stations I enjoy from far away and listening to podcasts from a local radio station. I really want to give Audacy a higher rating but Audacy crashes a lot, often after a short podcast (~5-7 minutes) is done when it is supposed to play the next episode, and sometimes it crashes in the middle of playing. I thought it may be my phone at first but I’ve updated it a few times since I’ve gotten Audacy about a year or so ago and the problem only seems to be getting worse. I wish it wouldn’t crash so much, it’s very frustrating to have to open it again, wait for it to load, go to my subscriptions, and find where I was only for it to crash again shortly after.

In a world where most changes are touted as an improvement, here’s an example of it not being true. Audacy falls terribly short from the previous TuneIn app. The designers/decision makers seem to not understand why consumers use the previous product, and created an alternative that was good for the company but not the consumers who use it.
Functionality is terrible in the following ways:
1) constant connectivity issues —-> it takes way to long to start playing and with no buffering it cuts in an out.
2) user interface is not helpful—> I push play and have to guess (or just wait) to hear sound.. it can take up to 30 seconds using WiFi.
3) if you miss a comment you can not go back 10 or 15 seconds to hear what was missed.
4) where’s the pause button? I received a phone call while listening to the Gary Parish show and missed 2 segments since I couldn’t pause the show.
5) and speaking of no pause option, what ever happened to buffering?

I could go on, but I hope my point was made, and you stay away from Audacy.

I’m sure Audacy saves the communication company money, but it’s at the expense of quality and functionality to their customers.

One simple feature Audacy lacks that should’ve been a no brainer to be included is that while listening to a radio station using Audacy , and your phone is locked, there is no “pause/play” button available from the lock screen. You have to go into Audacy itself to access the pause/play button. This is extremely annoying bc I’m usually on the go using Audacy and when i want to stop the radio from playing i don’t like to have to go thru these extra steps, I want to be able to stop radio play from the lock screen. Pandora and iTunes have this technology of being able to pause or play your music from the lock screen so one would expect this feature to be industry standards but I guess not.

This review is from an iPhone user.

I’m giving a rating of 3 right now because earlier today, sat sep 28, I wanted to get live news to hear the traffic report but unfortunately got some pre-recorded talk show or podcast. I kept trying to get “live” news without luck. I just got the Radio app so maybe I get something wrong but I don’t think so. Well I have it on now and I’m getting live news at 10:43pm. I’m sure I’ll upgrade later. I’ve been listening since 1972! Everyday then when I was working every day at HP Palo Alto. And now since I’ve retired I miss it everyday. Now since I now have an iPhone 8, I can listen everyday again! Thank you for the news, traffic, weather, sports and everything else.

Audacy has had its ups and downs for me. I use it every day because it’s my only choice to listen to the show I like. It only works on my iPhone/iPad ( I exclusively use my iPhone)so if I want to leave the house and want to leave my phone at home, I can’t stream from my cellular enabled Apple Watch. On top of that, if I get a call or an alarm goes off, the stream will not resume playing automatically after the call or after dismissing it. Sometimes I can hit play from the lock screen, other times I must force quit Audacy to get it to resume playing. This is all on an XS Max running most up to date iOS. It Could be great but it’s mediocre at best and more frustrating than anything.

I just updated Audacy last night and the rewind & fast forward buttons are gone. Why?! And it says in the update that now there’s an option to rewind our favorite songs if we want but I don’t see those options anywhere. It made it easier to switch stations with the rewind & ff button, now I have to go to every station and click on it just to listen. Please put it back the way it was. I was enjoying that. 😩 Other than that Audacy is the best!! My boyfriend from Greensboro introduced me to it last month! Made my day!! I can listen to all the music from the 80’s again 😍🙌

I’ve been using Audacy for a few months now...and I’m still not impressed. Not sure why the developers won’t add the option to pause the radio station I’m listening to. I miss that option the most since being forced to leave Tunein. Also, if I’m listening to Audacy through a Bluetooth speaker, when I turn the speaker off...Audacy quits playing on my phone and won’t start back up again when I hit play. When Audacy crashes, I usually have to completely restart my phone. With all the low ratings and complaints you would think they would fix things. I guess since most of us are stuck with them, they don’t have to.