FRApp is a mobile app for iOS and Android devices that enables users to listen to independent Austrian radio stations. You can get it here for iOS and here for Android devices.

In cooperation with Radio FRO, Freies Radio Salzkammergut and Radiofabrik, nerdybirdy created a complete design, backend and mobile app. One of the main aspects of the project was to keep it as simply as possible for the participants – so in the future, other independent radio stations interested in making themselves more visible to the public can appear in the app without having to do more than to comply with some simple standards defined for bringing their information into the app. So if you run a radio station and are interested in appearing in FRApp, just drop us a line.

Here’s an excerpt of what users can do with FRApp:

• listen to live streams and get infos about the currently running show,
• view daily program schedules for the individual stations,
• get all the infos about certain shows,
• subscribe to shows and therefore receive reminders before they start,
• download archived shows and listen to them offline,
• find out which tracks have been played at specific times (“track service“).

Some nerdy background infos

FRApp is not a native app created with Objective-C or Java, but a so-called hybrid app. Using Adobe AIR Mobile and the excellent Starling and Feathers frameworks, the app was created to be fully responsive (when it comes to the devices’ screen sizes) and platform independent while maintaining an unique user experience. This means that there is no need to create a separate app for (in this case) iOS and Android – when done right, the same app (/codebase) can be deployed onto different platforms with ease. Needless to say that apps created this way are not as labor-intensive (and therefore not as expensive for clients) than having to create completely separate builds for different platforms.