Stitcher Radio is one of my favorite apps and I truly do use it every day, so I’m happy to see it launching new features which will make it easier to keep up to date with the upcoming U.S. Presidential Election.
The Election Center special section will be visible once you open the app and it aggregates coverage of the campaign and political news. This includes exclusive audio updates from the likes of CBS News, Bloomberg, MSNBC, Slate and more. You’ll also be able to select the candidate you want to follow and it will pull together all the news about them and the campaigns themselves will also be able to utilize this to deliver messages.
Stitcher has even opened up its push notifications to the campaigns and certain news agencies so you can get real-time audio updates. Don’t worry about being bombarded though, as it has set up quality and quantity limitations on this.
“There’s an avalanche of coverage during election season and it can be tough to get the best information when you need it. We’re rolling out trending topics on demand, a first in the industry,” said Noah Shanok, CEO of Stitcher, in a prepared statement. “We see this as part of our mission to further the evolution of radio by making it more relevant and accessible than ever.”
Another interesting part of this Election Center is that Stitcher will be using internal and external transcription technology to provide trending topics. Let’s say the Ryan budget is suddenly hot again, this will bubble up and you can even skip to the specific section of the podcasts or shows which discuss this. It’s pretty neat and more useful than you’d think, especially if you really care about specific issues.
You can download the updated Stitcher app for iOS here (iTunes link). The Election Center is on iOS right now but look forward to it on Android shortly.