On January 5th at CES 2015, Google announced that they were coming out with a new offering built on the Google Cast technology, the tech that powers the Chromecast for those who are unaware, called Google Cast for audio. This new platform for listening to music should make things a whole lot easier for anyone who is simply blasting tunes while at home, at the office, or at a friends place where they have access to a local WiFi connection and can connect their smartphones or tablets to the same network. Google is working with a handful of partners and OEMs to make Google Cast a reality, among them are hardware partners like MediaTek who will be one of the companies providing the SoC’s to power the hardware, Sony, LG, Denon and others who will supplying the speaker hardware, and then the content partners like Pandora, NPR One, Play Music obviously, and many others at the start.
iHeart radio was one of those streaming content partners that Google listed would be supported on the Google Cast for audio platform, so users could easily open up the iHeart radio app and choose their favorite station, tap the cast button and in seconds they’d be listening to music on a Google Cast enabled speaker. On January 6th at CES 2015, one day after Google’s announcement, iHeart radio is announcing their upcoming support for the Google Cast platform, and that they’re service for the first time ever would also be appearing on PS4 and PS3 systems starting next month.
The announcement today from iHeart radio is more about the fact that they will be one of the very first apps and streaming services to support the Google Cast for audio platform, and less about the fact that they will be a supported service as we learned that detail yesterday, we just didn’t have a timeframe for when to expect it. Google Cast for audio powered speakers are expected to be launching sometime in February, so that’s also when we can probably expect to see iHeart radio give an update to the app for users to start streaming tunes to compatible Google Cast for audio speaker devices. Do you listen to iHeart radio? If so will you be looking into picking up a Google Cast for audio speaker set, soundbar or A/V receiver?