RTE Radio One Ireland Not Streaming through Apple Music on Mac or Siri on Homepod

I just wrote to TuneIn on Twitter and got this reply. Finger crossed!

Hello Stiabhna,

Thank you for contacting us regarding this problem. This is a known issue that our Developers are aware of. We're working to resolve the problem and hope to have it fixed in an upcoming release.

I apologize for the inconvenience and we appreciate your support of TuneIn!

@Jennnwa

You should re-investigate “casting” your rte player to your homepod. I’ve not had any trouble doing that, except that once you’re out of range with the casting device, it will stop playing.

If you’re casting from an iOS device, start a stream in your RTE app and then hit the lock button on the side. Wake up your device without unlocking it to reveal the lockscreen player controls. There you can change/select your homepod.

I opened a ticket with Apple using the Feedback Assistant on Sept. 15th 2022.

I updated it today. No responses to it, ever.

According to the notes, I'm the only one that reported such an issue.

The evidence I had then, and still have, strongly suggests this is the result of a change Apple made between IOS 15.x and IOS 16.x.

I have an old iPhone running iOS 15.x and I have a MacBook Pro that does not support the latest macOS (and so runs an older version of Apple Music).

On each of these devices, Apple Music will play all RTE Radio stations.

On the iPhone (iOS 15), TuneIn Radio (currently 24.8.1) will play all RTE Radio stations.

The same was true for an iPad before it was upgraded to IOS16.x.

To the contrary, Apple Music and TuneIn Radio (24.8.1) on IOS 16.x will not play any RTE Radio station.

There was a version of TuneIn that did work on IOS 16 for a short time but that was upgraded soon after IOS16 was released after which TuneIn no longer worked.

As far as I can tell, any IOS16.x device (my Homepod Mini is impacted) will not play RTE Radio but IOS 15.x devices will continue to do so. No idea why only RTE is impacted but I'd like Apple to explain.

There is a person who can't be named to thank for this. It was explained as follows - iOS 16 had security changes. They required secure streams or similar. This didn't apply to iOS 15 or earlier, which is why TuneIn worked on the older systems. TuneIn needed to use a different RTE stream. So he managed to get the right people to talk to each other and get TuneIn to link to an RTE stream compatible with iOS 16. So he is owed a big thank you.

I have to test it tonight knowing the stream link has been changed. Yahoo!

Exact-same issue here. Fact is, the issue does not lie with Apple. I've got 4 HomePod mini strewn throughout the house, several iOS and MacOS devices, all on same Apple ID account( incl. the obligatory Apple Music subscription.) Got in touch with RTE tech support weeks ago, who maintained the issue lies with TuneIn not streaming RTE services as before the issue had occurred. I was supposed to be contacted once the issue was resolved. Obviously, I haven't heard back since. Throughly annoying not being able to listen to Lyric FM and other RTE stations. Sunshine Radio, FM104, 98FM etc. meaning all non-RTE station play just fine. Only RTE doesn't seem to know what to do next. I simply cannot fathom as to why this issue seems unsolvable. Those of you out there on social media should publicise this issue through all media channels available to you.

That's strange. I have no problem casting from the RTE Radio app (not the RTE Player) to my HomePods...

I contacted Tune In on this problem yesterday and it seems to be fixed today! Good news!

Can confirm that there's an issue with this through testing on several of our family's devices. RTE radio appears not to be working through Apple Music as of a few weeks ago. Stations play fine through TuneIn App on iOS, but fail to play in Music. After Music fails to stream RTE it will just play some random track from my music library. We got home pod for the kitchen for the main purpose of listening to Lyric FM.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the problem lies with TuneIn, as that’s where Siri plays the radio stations from. The RTE stations haven’t been working on TuneIn for a while. Just a suspicion but not sure what to do about it

The RTÉ Radio app for iPhone/iPad works fine and you can stream to a HomePod. The problem is you can’t ask the HomePod (Siri) directly to play any RTE stations anymore.

I agree. TuneIn seems to be the main problem, not RTÉ. Siri has not recognised RTE stations for months now so Apple has to take some of the blame. The new RTE app does not allow streaming as yet, making that app less than useful to get around this problem. I hope somebody is paying attention to these comments.

Hello again,

I had a great response from TuneIn, about twenty emails… it’s an RTÉ issue at the heart of it.

TuneIn were extremely apologetic.

Unfortunately for Apple, I cancelled my Apple Music sub over this, as I needed voice control for radio with a small baby at the time. Now, the child is bigger and it’s not necessary any more but reading about the lady whose brother needs it, it’s important this is fixed. Apple, can you make contact with RTÉ and give them guidance to rectify this?

Nothing to do with Apple, it’s RTE’s issue. They had a similar issue in the past with google.

Tunelin told me the problem resides exclusively with RTE. I’ve tweeted about it maybe others could do the same.