Is it better to have everything in one app, or to have separate apps for specific uses?
Startup Agogo is a new all-in-one personalized audio app that combines your favorite music and podcasts. That’s different from most apps which do just podcasts, or just Internet radio.
The Agogo app integrates music, news and podcasts all together. On the news and podcast side, it includes curated channels such as books, comedy, sports, business, interviews, politics and the like. Each channel streams content continuously.
Agogo also includes a “My Music” channel, which pulls music from either your iPhone or Rdio or Spotify. (Subscriptions to Rdio and Spotify are required.) Agogo also includes other content that is not typically on audio, such as text articles and television programs. Content that Agogo has turned from text articles into audio include New York Post horoscopes and Yahoo Yahoo Sports headlines.
Most audio apps focus on just music, like Spotify or Pandora, or just podcasts, like Swell. But Agogo bridges the two. While going after both music and podcasts seems like it could be difficult, Agogo founder J.D. Heilprin says having both in one app has advantages. For example you can hear an interview with a musician and then click to hear music by that artist, as well as related podcasts. It works the other way as well, as you can listen to podcasts related to any music.
Agogo customizes content to individual users and learns as you use it. For example, the more you listen to a piece of content or mark it as a favorite, or share it, the more similar content will appear in channels.
In a related area, I recently wrote about and have been using Swell, a personalized streaming podcast app.
Swell Takes Streaming News And Talk Radio To Mobile
Tomio Geron
Forbes Staff