A Big Name In Gaming Goes All In On Radio

Discord is a text, voice, and chat messenger often referred to as a social media site, and it's become extremely popular in the streaming world as it continues to improve functionality.  The app is essentially a fancier version of AOL Instant Messenger, with more features and user control.  It's taken the gaming world by storm lately, allowing content creators to streamline all their social media and communications with their fans.  

Now it comes native to the PlayStation 5, essentially allowing chat and voice chat between players on all platforms.  And it's about to add another big feature:  TuneIn, the all-radio application.  It allows anyone in Discord voice chat to play their favorite live and local radio stations or podcasts on the platform for their friends - Essentially letting anyone become a DJ on one of the world's most popular online meeting spaces, with just a click of a button.

Fox News spoke to TuneIn CEO Rich Stern, who explained that the process is fairly simple.  "In any voice chat on the Discord platform, you'll see a little icon that looks like a rocket ship," said Stern.  "You press that and you launch the Tunein activity for over a hundred thousand radio stations, five million podcasts." 

And it's also shareable; while the first user who clicks the icon plays the role of DJ, they can hand it off to anyone else in the voice chat.  And that's just one of the integration plans in the works at TuneIn, with Stern telling us "We've created a technology and a platform that makes integration and making everything behind the scenes work seamlessly for our partners.  So yeah, you're gonna see more communities like Discord and more apps like Discord bring in the radio experience." 

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