
NPR One - antr
http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/
======
minivan
Cool, hopefully it will replace the All Songs Considered audio stream (which
is great).

Side note: Is it just me, or this "scroll to reveal stuff in steps" is a bit
frustrating? It seems to be used more and more often and I am sometimes
puzzled by the fact that I'm missing the scrolling step. I try scrolling and
get either too far (which shows half an image coming from above) or don't get
anywhere (which makes me scroll more and skip steps). Here's an example:
[http://www.spendeeapp.com/](http://www.spendeeapp.com/)

Am I doing something wrong?

~~~
stronglikedan
It's not just you. It's an annoying trend. Perhaps it's good for phones and
tablets (that's arguable), but I don't think it's good for mouse input. At
least this landing page (NPR) has optional buttons on the right side, unlike
most pages I've seen like this (Spendee). It's turning "mobile first" into
"mobile only", and I am being dragged kicking and screaming into it.

~~~
mbesto
As always, the general rule of the desktop is "don't break my browser
functionality". Browser functionality = scroll bar, back/forward button,
refresh, bookmark, etc.

~~~
drewblaisdell
A better rule is that these browser functions should do what the user expects.
I don't think this page violates that rule (and it might not even violate
yours: the scrollbar's movement has not been altered on this page like on
Apple's product pages).

~~~
endgame
It violates mine: on just about every other page when I press spacebar the
page scrolls.

------
mmanfrin
I really appreciate NPR. They truly try to embetter their offerings. It's nice
that we have a source of news that is not beholden to advertisers or corporate
interests (although the number of 'This content was made possible by donations
from...' I hear at the end of the larger shows is a bit worrying).

I just wish Says You would release their episodes as a podcast.

~~~
FedRegister
>It's nice that we have a source of news that is not beholden to advertisers
or corporate interests (although the number of 'This content was made possible
by donations from...' I hear at the end of the larger shows is a bit
worrying).

Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a thing, ain't it? The vast majority of
NPR's funding comes from advertisers, excuse me, underwriters.

Edit: Well fuck me I'm wrong. Carry on, citizen.

~~~
VikingCoder
> The vast majority

No, it doesn't. From what I can see, it's more like 17%.

[http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-
finances](http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances)

~~~
embolalia
17% from corporations, but also count foundations if you're looking for
underwriters overall, not just corporate interests. Probably also universities
and "other" for 41.6% That's still not even remotely close to a vast majority,
of course. And I think there's a qualitative difference between getting
funding from an organization that wants to increase its bottom line and one
that wants to create a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

~~~
ethbro
"a more just, verdant, and peaceful world"

Well that sponsorship was obviously well-spent!

~~~
mikeash
I recognize the phrase and can even hear the hosts speaking it in my head...
but I couldn't tell you the name of the sponsor. I'm sure it'll come to me.

~~~
kasey_junk
Macarthur foundation. Most famous as being givers of the "genius grants".
Founded by the people that owned Bankers Life Insurance.

------
ruytlm
This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn
app?

This is the biggest problem with audio apps these days - you get everyone
trying to make a similar thing, and because they're all competing they all try
and lock each other out of their own products.

What would be so much better is a content-agnostic platform, that'll let you
play whatever the hell you want - whether it's music, talk radio, podcasts,
whatever.

Seriously - why does everyone assume that if I want to listen to e.g. NPR, I
_only_ want to listen to NPR?

~~~
rsync
"This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn
app?"

Also, why do all these damned apps have ridiculous access requirements ? In
recent weeks I have been dismayed to find that HBO Go and Sonos apps both
require access to all of my media files (android app) in order to be
installed.

I'll bet that's not uncommon. Presumably it's just lazy development by people
that don't know the finer points of the SDKs, etc., but it's pretty ridiculous
what a lot of these apps (that, as the parent points out, aren't really
necessary anyway[1]) require.

[1] HBO Go does not need to be an app, as demonstrated by the fact that I use
it in my browser (OSX) every day.

~~~
vorporeal
This seems to be due to Google's new grouping of permissions for Android apps.
The permission group you're referring to is described as "Uses one or more of:
files on the device such as images, videos, or audio, the device's external
storage". That means that if the app wants to use some of its own data which
is located on external storage (which is pretty common), you're also giving it
permission to access your media files on the device, because Google thinks
(for some incomprehensible reason) that these are similar permissions and
grouping them makes it easier for users to understand what's going on.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _Google thinks (for some incomprehensible reason) that these are similar
> permissions and grouping them makes it easier for users to understand_

Yeah, I suppose they don't want to be too granular and overwhelm users with a
ton of permissions but, to your point, it actually makes things worse. Overly
broad categories lead to suspicion.

It's funny though, because for years, we all downloaded/installed desktop apps
which had free reign on our machines. I suppose the facts that apps can come
from untrusted sources, are thought to have more specific functions, are
installed on very personal devices, and were born in an age where privacy
concerns/fraud/malware/connectedness were common, all have something to do
with it.

I wonder, though, if our concern is mostly stimulated by the fact that we're
now being presented with permission choices in the first place. As, now, even
"trusted" brands like HBO can earn our suspicion if we think their apps are
being greedy with permission requests.

------
dctoedt
If this catches on, it might disintermediate (EDIT: or accelerate the existing
disintermediation of) the local public radio stations, which will then lose
donations, which will then be less able to do local reporting. (Of course I'm
not sure our Houston public radio station does all that much local reporting
to start with.)

~~~
javaun
Concerns around disintermediation and what they stations call "bypass" ( NPR
delivering audio direct to consumers and bypassing terrestrial FM) is what
prevented this from launching earlier, not the tech or UX concerns. They had
to launch with a plurality of stations, localizations was required, and they
had to work donations into the mix. Donations is particularly challenging
since there is no one donation form (every station is independent, each has
their own form/account, and no one would agree to a central account powered
by, say Stripe or whatever). They couldn't launch an MVP like Swell, they had
to go live with way more. That said, public radio has its strengths, one of
which is that they own their content.

------
arcticfox
I was hoping that I could say: "Yes, I like Radiolab" and "No, I don't like
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me", but that doesn't seem to be a feature. This would be
perfect if they added it!

~~~
jonesetc
I thought the same thing, but that's when I would say we're probably all
better off just using a podcast.

[http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php](http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php)

------
anigbrowl
Good stuff, but your feed will be 'hadcrafted'? No it won't. That specifically
means a human being involved in structuring your feed at the other end I
seriously doubt that's the case. Words have meanings beyond their emotional
marketing value, subverting them for commercial ends will eventually erode the
trust of your audience.

~~~
mtinkerhess
You don't know that there's not a human being at the other end curating the
list, do you? It's plausible that there's manual selection involved in each
day's playlist.

~~~
anigbrowl
As I said already 'I seriously doubt that's the case.'

~~~
pbreit
You're probably wrong as there are almost definitely humans involved in
sifting through the various available programs and influencing which get
inserted into playlists.

------
techpeace
Rather than some aimless techie kvetching, I'd just like to pass along a
hearty congrats to the folks who made this happen. Great work, and I'm excited
to use it!

------
CapitalistCartr
Every corporate/large organization Web site wants me to use their app. I
already have an app! It's the Web browser. It already plays video and audio.

~~~
giarc
Can a mobile browser continue to play audio when your phone is in your pocket?
For example, YouTube stops playing when I put my iPhone to sleep.

~~~
fsck--off
Yes, it can. Start the video and put the iPhone to sleep. When you wake the
iPhone up a moment later the music controls on the lock screen allow you to
resume playing the audio. You can then turn the screen off and the audio will
still play.

~~~
giarc
That's a good work around, but I would not want that to be the instructions I
give to people wanting to listen to my audio stream from a website.

------
x1798DE
I don't understand why this needs to be an app. I listen to many things that
aren't NPR, and I don't want to switch between BeyondPod and NPR One just to
get some sort of curated list. This reminds me of a few years ago where a
bunch of podcasts were offering personalized apps that just downloaded the
archives and maybe some extra content. I might have paid for the extra
content, but I didn't need an app on my phone for every podcast I listen to.

Assuming the killer feature here is that it's curated or somehow personalized,
and not just something that plays all NPR shows (the page is a bit vague), it
seems like you could replace this with a service that generates personalized
RSS feeds on the fly, server-side. That way it can integrate directly into
your own podcast-listening workflow, where you might have plugins or some
specific setup that you prefer to use.

~~~
netcan
Podcasts (especially on android) is still remarkably broken for most people. I
have installed an app and subscribed to several podcasts for a number of
people who are below average in their tech literacy. They all fail at being
able to consistently manage the app and get the content they want.

Finding and subscribing to a new podcast, even if they know which one they
want and can get to the website is an almost 100% fail rate.

Even for me, discovery is broken. I'm sure there is interesting stuff out
there that I can't find.

In any case, I think that between an app that people know to install and and
click on an RSS feed that they have no idea what to do with, the app is the
better choice.

~~~
x1798DE
I suppose you could offer an app in addition to an RSS feed, but honestly I've
never encountered someone who didn't know how to download a podcast.

If they are primarily worried about people having trouble downloading podcasts
for whatever reason, it seems like they could have saved themselves a lot of
work by just contacting some of the biggest podcast apps on the market
(BeyondPod I think is the biggest) about making it easy to subscribe to this
particular feed. They could make a custom-built plugin that just installs the
feed, they could potentially license a special distribution of the app that
has the feed pre-installed.

Fragmentation of the audio listening market is really not justified and is not
really going to help anything.

~~~
netcan
Fragmentation is also choice and the potential for new and better things to
emerge.

I think the user facing side of RSS and the other metaphors and conventions
around podcasts are broken. Discovery is broken. So, I'm ok with
fragmentation. Maybe there is a better way out there to be discovered.

------
marineboudeau
Shameless plug: WNYC is experimenting in this space as well with Discover
[[http://www.wnyc.org/mobile](http://www.wnyc.org/mobile)] - contains our
local, national content but also others': NPR, PRX, etc. It works on the
subway, while you're offline.

We're really excited about NPR One, too and glad to be part of it as well.

------
kbenson
I'm relieved they have an android app. From listening to NPR, one could almost
think andoid was some niche player, based on the amount of free press the
iphone gets. That may have eased up some recently, but for a while it felt
like they had some meeting where they decided to replace "smartphone" with
"iphone" in everything they said.

~~~
Nicholas_C
On the website for my local NPR station (91.7 KXT, Dallas/Fort Worth) they
have a playlist that shows recently played songs and the only option to "Buy
Song" takes you to iTunes. I'm assuming they get a share of the revenues from
songs purchased and I wish they would link to Amazon or Google Play instead so
I could help support. They've introduced me to a lot of good bands and I buy a
couple songs I hear on the station a week.

------
ejfox
I scrolled through this whole thread looking for a mention of Swell who have
been my go-to app for this purpose for the past couple of months (feels like
it's been forever though, can't imagine life without it).

I pretty much get NPR hourly news updates, Fresh Air, interspersed with
episodes of Marc Maron's WTF and some random stuff like A16Z and stuff from
the BBC. It's pretty much ideal.

I love NPR, and before Swell would just have the local station on all day, but
I find that NPR doesn't make enough content to fill up a whole day of straight
listening (at least not enough content that I like) - I wonder if the NPR One
app would automatically find shows from their archive that I might be
interested in to fill the time.

I'd be curious if other users of Swell will be switching to this app, or if
they, like me, see it as a slightly different and improved model to tie
together content from a variety of different sources.

~~~
covati
well, now that swell is shutting down it might make sense. But I'll miss the
variety that I get from swell :(

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/28/apple-to-buy-swell-
for-30-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/28/apple-to-buy-swell-
for-30-million-per-report/)

~~~
pbreit
Another option: [http://anten.na](http://anten.na)

------
brianbreslin
My first thought was "I hope this is paid like pandora." I would love to be
able to purchase content in app, or at least contribute through the app. Maybe
split the proceeds with my local npr station so we can end those annoying fund
raising drives.

------
tomjen3
Beware if you use google or facebook to login to it (what the fuck do you need
to login in the first place) it requires the right to get your friends lists
and to post content on your behalf.

~~~
hodgesmr
You log in to "thumbs up" content to get a personalized stream.

~~~
geekam
You can use NPR login.

------
danielweber
Scroll down broken here. First I have to click on the page to get scrolling to
work. Then as I use the space bar to scroll down, the dots change but often
the text does not.

~~~
bduerst
Are you using NoScript or some other javascript killer?

Usually these are driven by some custom js.

~~~
danielweber
Not on this machine. Plain Google Chrome on Windows.

------
mikeash
I love the idea. I listen to NPR a fair amount but it's always a bit hit or
miss as to whether I'll catch it at an interesting moment, since my listening
is basically "whenever I happen to be in the car, or possibly out for a walk
where I don't want to enjoy quietude." I work around it to an extent with
podcasts of shows I like, but that works poorly for anything related to news.

------
jonmagic
Why does the app need microphone access? I missed the blurb when you first
open the app and can't seem to figure out how to replay it now.

~~~
theg2
Certain ads will allow you to interact with them via your microphone for hands
free driving or whatever. It's new and you'll probably start seeing it more in
other apps but this is the first time I've seen it in an app.

~~~
rsync
To all current and future app developers using microphone-ad-interaction: die
in a fire.

------
grrrando
Anyone else find the concept a little weird? NPR is already like this in many
ways (heavily left-leaning) so this argument is already somewhat moot, but:
hearing news stories tailored just for me sounds ignorant. News shouldn't be a
thing which I am allowed to filter based on my biases.

~~~
cantankerous
NPR is loaded with programming that isn't just news-related. This includes
musical programming, comedy, special interest programs, and topical shows.
Listeners to NPR already know this. They filter what they want to hear by
turning the radio on and off.

NPR's news segments are top notch journalism. You'd be hard-pressed to find
another media institution as large as NPR in the US that does nearly as good
of a job in my opinion.

------
meandave
This is pretty great, I actually hacked together a little terminal interface
to search through all of their stations and stream straight to your shell.
Started pulling it apart to also provide a webaudio interface. Looks like they
have that covered now though

------
rglover
Super cool. Only thing, though, is that they should be charging for this.
Seeing as how NPR stations rely on listener donations, this seems like a
missed opportunity to earn some extra revenue and bolster the budget for
stations.

~~~
tormeh
But it's NPR... It's government-owned, right? A public broadcaster? Can they
legally charge for anything?

~~~
MBCook
They're not government owned. They're get a subsidy through the appropriate
government agency (don't remember the name at the moment) but it's only about
10% of their budget and they are free to act however they wish.

NPR is not state media. That would be Voice of America, which is not allowed
to broadcast in the US.

~~~
tormeh
I just looked it up and it is allowed to broadcast domestically since 2013.
Anyway it kind of seems a bit quaint in the face of BBC world service.

------
ForHackernews
I hope it's better than the "This American Life" Android app. I'm still angry
that I spent real money on a buggy mobile interface that freezes and crashes
for podcasts that are free in a normal browser.

------
djhworld
I love NPR and listen to a few of their podcasts via PocketCasts.

Not sure if I'd actually use this app, but just wanted to say you guys in the
states are fortunate to have NPR producing top quality radio!

------
jcburns
Oh please, NPR, take the money you spend on developing fancy misguided apps
that supposedly serve up "curated content" and spend it on more reporters'
salaries.

Lots more reporters. Lots and LOTS more reporters. The world is a big place,
and the list of crucial, complex, reportable issues is growing by the day.

Then we can enjoy the "curation" work of the producers of the fine programs
you put on the air and online—have you heard them? They're really a pretty
good example of curated content. (Of course, those programs used to simply be
called good broadcast journalism.)

~~~
npunt
To hire reporters you need $. To get $ in the digital age, you really should
have some control of the distribution of your content. Therefore, an app makes
sense, especially at NPRs scale.

~~~
jcburns
NPR has had INTENSE control of their content since the 1970s. They don't need
an app for that. They also have staggering amounts of donations and endowment
funds. They may, sadly, have more money than they know what to do with.

------
thekevan
No browser version?

~~~
rugbydev
Yes, [http://one.npr.org](http://one.npr.org)

------
zellyn
On my Nexus 5, this went through the login/signup process, but now crashes on
startup. Every time.

Anyone else had better luck?

~~~
pachydermic
Check for the update?

~~~
zellyn
Didn't help.

------
chris_mahan
National Personal Radio?

------
m1117
I really like using AGOGO that includes NPR too

------
ck2
Why not for my desktop browser too?

~~~
rugbydev
It is, [http://one.npr.org](http://one.npr.org)

------
hodgesmr
Xbox One.

Pandora One.

Ubuntu One.

NPR One.

Stop it!

~~~
imcn
Nexus One. OnePlus One. LG Optimus One. HTC One. Even Apple's got One!

~~~
freehunter
What One does Apple have? I searched it but only got an employment agency with
no relationship to the computer company.

~~~
mikeash
I'd assume it was a joke on the Apple I, their first computer.

