BBC SOUNDS

The Beeb is ditching its iPlayer Radio in favour of this new radio/podcasts hybrid which promises easier access to 80,000 hours of content.

The UX with Sounds is much better and what you’d expect from Spotify or Apple Music.

As with iPlayer Radio, you can turn a dial of all 58 of the BBC’s national and regional live stations. But now you can also thumb through categories - such as Pop & Chart, RnB, Crime, Live Sessions and Comedy – to discover live and ondemand shows to stream. Sounds also learns what you like based on your listening habits to recommend shows just for you. Like shows by adding them to My List to listen later and Subscribe to faves to have them automatically sent to your device. You can also search by artist or star to bring up a list of anything they’ve been in you might like. The drawback is you can’t download for offline play, but we’re told the plan is to roll that out later in the year.