Tech

APP OF THE MONTH: AGOGO makes radio channels with your music

by Knar Bedian

A 15,000 mile drive across America leaves a lot of time for thinking. With three startups under his belt, J.D. Heilprin’s long road trip became quite the brainstorm session. “I wired up my car with an iPad, Android, and iPhone and I drove across the country thinking about my next startup.” J.D. says. What resulted was AGOGO.

AGOGO is an app that brings together audio sources of all sorts: from the music in your library and your favorite radio stations, to poems and restaurant reviews, to sports and weather updates. Its curated channels help users navigate the wealth of sound that’s available, but more importantly, the app puts content from a wide variety of sites and platforms all in one place. “If I find something I like, I can’t go deeper on it,” JD explains, which is why AGOGO encourages users to go on an aural journey of sorts.

AGOGO’s built-in discovery engine means listeners can find radio programs related to the content on their iPhone. Like that song by Metric? The app can lead you to the rest of the album on iTunes, or the recording of the band’s World Café session, or a news story on the act that’s been converted to audio using text-to-speech.

While useful in its consolidation–there’s no need to hop from app to mobile site to app to get to the content you want–without its clean interface its usefulness may have been compromised. Simplicity is key for this app, which is intended to be an on-the-go companion. Each content category is coded with its own bright color and the large sans-serif text allows for the “glanceability” that drivers will find useful.

As for the future of AGOGO? They plan to incorporate more premium services (beyond music services like Spotify and Rdio, which are currently offered) and introducing contextual discovery by integrating location services.