The ability to download radio programmes to the iPhone from the BBC iPlayer is coming, the corporation says.
The app, which was upgraded this week to allow the downloading of television programmes, currently excludes the ability to save a radio show locally. But the BBC has told RadioToday.co.uk that they “hope to be able to offer mobile downloads of BBC radio programmes in the future and are working through the relevant technical, rights and permissions issues.
In addition, BBC iPlayer mobile downloads will be coming to Android devices in early 2013 and the BBC is looking to making this functionality available to other devices in the future.
On the BBC help pages, it says: “Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to download all radio programmes for rights reasons. Certain content, including full-length music tracks, can only be offered with digital rights management protection (DRM), and we don’t yet have permission from the BBC Trust to offer radio content with DRM.”
So whilst the technology is available for radio programmes to be downloaded, the rights are yet to be cleared – rather than the iPlayer team treating radio as second best, as it has been claimed.
Posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2012 at 12:37 pm by RadioToday UK