LBC: UK, World & Breaking News 17+

Admittedly I only make use of the app to listen to the live broadcasts, rather than any of the catch up or podcast features. Though in just that capacity, the app is very good. You can easily connect and start listening as easily as you could on a music streaming app.

It fills a gap you perhaps didn’t realise you had in your radio listening capabilities - taking out your phone and being able to connect straight away and play it through an external media player in a quicker way than safari or chrome do.

One minor gripe I have, and the reason for the shortage of one star is a slight nuisance in the ads. I appreciate the need for advertisement in apps, but it’s not particularly cleverly done here. As you begin to play a broadcast your ears are barraged by the sound of both the broadcast and an ad simultaneously. Thankfully you can skip the ad after 10 seconds and if weren’t for the jarring double playback this would be a perfectly reasonable way to present an advert before a broadcast.

As I say, on the whole pretty useful!

Catch up option is difficult to get working, it does allow 20s jumping, but cannot keep downloads for more than a week, also the “walled garden” nature means that if you listen to podcasts from other sources, you need to keep switching between apps... we also lose the ability to pay for a download that don’t contain adverts.

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For those who get lost with subscribing/downloading of shows (and for feedback for the developers)...

The app works in two different ways - First, there an overview area (bottom bar shows Stations, Music For, and My Downloads), where the Stations take you into a completely different side to the app (focused entirely on that station), which shows a small “G Home” icon in the top right (this is the thing to take you back to the overview area).

To subscribe to a station, you need to login (from the overview area, using the small cog icon in the top right), then “go to” a station, find a show from the “Schedule + Catch Up” page (select an old date first), then press “Subscribe”... it will ask you to enable notifications with no explanation as to why - it won’t work if you decline.

I assume they are using notifications to trigger the downloads of new shows (rather than the app polling the server every 30 minutes), but just as likely, they could be doing this to annoy you with notifications (i.e. the “look at me, you haven’t used me for at least a day” problem).

I have subscribed to the LBC catch up service for years and was very happy to pay a subscription fee for this service. Recently bought a new phone and found out that the app no longer is supported and one now has to use this newer and greatly inferior version. Every time you turn it in you have to watch an introductory video advert and the lengthy news, travel and advertisements which used to be deleted no all remain in the recording. I listen a lot when I am driving and, because I don’t want to be reaching for my phone whilst trying to keep my eyes on the road, I am now forever listening to tedious and out of date information which hugely detracts from my enjoyment. Surely LBC must realise that people subscribed to the service to hear their favourite presenters, not several day old traffic reports!! Please bring back the service as you used to provide it; I would be more than happy to pay a higher subscription if that would be necessary.