British institution, the BBC are shutting down their online radio service as early as this month to replace it with their new platform.

The BBC have announced that they will be shutting down iPlayer Radio on September 16th. The online platform offered free streaming of all of their iconic live radio stations as well as catch up for all of their radio shows from the past 30 days.

They will be moving listeners over to their newer BBC Sounds platform which they will now prioritise for their digital radio and music output. Since launching BBC Sounds has already increased its user base to “nearly 1.9 million weekly signed in users”. That’s more than the iPlayer Radio app received.

The downside to this news is that BBC Sounds is currently only available in the UK. BBC iPlayer Radio offered access to their radio programming to listeners around the world. The BBC’s director of radio and education has confirmed that they are hoping to make BBC Sounds widely available outside of the UK in the future.

Purnell said: “We’ve been improving Sounds all the time, and the time has come to switch off iPlayer Radio so the BBC only has one audio app. We said that was the plan when we launched Sounds, but have kept iPlayer Radio going till now as there was well-used functionality in iPlayer Radio which we wanted to implement – and improve on – in Sounds.”