ARN’s iHeartRadio Australia marks its fifth anniversary today with a specially created birthday playlist on a pop-up station.
Since its launch in 2013, it has recorded 1.2 million registered users. iHeartRadio Australia’s offering includes Australia’s largest podcast library with 1.4 million episodes available to audiences from almost 12,000 contributors globally, live radio from ARN, SBS, ABC, ACE and Fairfax radio networks, and curated genre and seasonal stations including ACRA Award-winning Christmas station Elf Radio.
The brand is also know for its live events. In the last five years, iHeartRadio Australia has hosted live performances by Kylie Minogue, Ed Sheeran, Noah Cyrus, Jennifer Hudson, Halsey, Zara Larsson, Alessia Cara, Rag’n’Bone Man, Culture Club and Justin Bieber. Annually, iHeartRadio Australia also has competitions for users to win tickets to the biggest iHeartRadio overseas music events including the annual Jingle Ball, iHeartRadio Music Awards and iconic iHeartRadio Music Festival, which takes place this weekend, Friday September 21 and Saturday September 22, in Las Vegas.
In 2017, the service had major product upgrades with the launch of the global iHeartRadio app in Australia and the added capability of targeted advertising technology and integration into Google Home, Amazon Echo and HEOS by Denon home smart speakers.
ARN CEO Rob Atkinson said: “iHeartRadio Australia has managed to both adapt and thrive in an ever changing audio landscape over the past five years. We’ve positioned iHeartRadio Australia as the audio platform of choice for many Australians and created some incredible content through our iHeartRadio Live events. The plans for the next five years will see iHeartRadio Australia be our key vehicle in delivering on ARN’s promise to create the future of audio entertainment in Australia.”
iHeartRadio Australia’s content director Brett Nossiter said: “I am immensely proud of all iHeartRadio has achieved in only five years in an ever changing and dynamic landscape. We have launched 125 new stations to the platform, and countless pop-up stations. We have created some incredible content for music fans, and over 30 iHeartRadio Live events – the biggest being the incredible Bieber Island performance. And we have even bigger plans in place for the future. The next five years are going to be next level.”
iHeartRadio Australia COO Geraint Davies said: “It is amazing to see the continued rapid growth of iHeartRadio in Australia year after year, and we are really only just getting started. I want to thank the huge team in the US at iHeartMedia who go above and beyond to support us, and locally I want to thank the publishers and labels for all their support since day one of launch. In partnership with them we have flourished in this very competitive music space. The biggest highlight for me over these five years, apart from some of the amazing performance I have seen, is meeting listeners who love what we are doing at iHeartRadio Australia – it’s really rewarding to hear their stories.”