Stitcher Radio has been ever-present on Android, a popular way to link together podcasts, news channels and bits of popular culture. But, being one of the first audio-related apps on the platform, it lacked a cohesive design.
Colin Billings, Director of Product Management at Stitcher, would agree with me. “This is a complete rebuild,” he begins. “There was no coherent design on Android [until ICS] like there was on iOS.” But Stitcher 3.0 is not just a redesign, it’s a complete rebuild. “We started building the app in September,” while the company was still patching the old one, “thinking about how people want to listen to spoken word content on mobile.”
As with the iOS app, Stitcher 3.0 emphasizes browsing and content discovery. One of the app’s biggest draws has traditionally been that it accommodates users looking for something new in addition to the familiar.
“The new app is very imaged-based,” Billings continues. “People are visual beings, and we thought, ‘how do we get images into the experience?'” The decision seems to have worked: Stitcher is now as attractive as it is functional, with a fully-realized Holo design that puts it in the same league as Rdio or TuneIn Radio.
It’s also much faster than before, and integrates with Jelly Bean’s expandable notifications. You can rewind up to 30 seconds of play directly in the notification bar in addition to pausing and skipping forward.
“We’re very excited about this release,” he concludes. “[Companies] don’t get to do this very often, so we wanted to get it right.” Stitcher 3.0 for Android is a fantastic addition to a growing canon of amazing audio-related apps available on the platform.
Download Stitcher 3.0 for Android.
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