[Jon]

I'm not sure if Rayo has been delayed or was just announced too early, but yes it will hopefully make things better. 

Problem they have compared with Global is that Global has 7 brands, all nice and neat. Looking at the list of stations in Planet Radio, there's loads and it's a right mess. Some are the same station just with a different brand - Free Radio and Hits Radio, a lot are just playlists rather than stations and some stations have multiple varients. All the versions of Absolute could fill a seperate platform themselves there's so many now. Definately needs a tidy, and a bit of a purge. 

I’m not sure any of that is an issue though. Surely if the more variety you appear to be offering on a service you’re charging for the better. Also if you’re picking Metro Radio over Hits Radio it’s because it’s your local station, so it doesn’t matter that it’s a duplication of content. Considering Spotify has infinite playlists and choice and each stream is going to be relatively cheap to achieve it make sense.

On the subject of Free Radio and the Hits brand given their is no heritage value in the former it’s a rebranding which would have made sense to do years ago. 

Surely the ultimate aim of these apps from the big radio groups should be to let the listener choose their format and their speech content. So you could have Gold’s music (or something even more tailored) with Chris Moyles fronted links and local news for your region or Classic FM breakfast with Roman Kemp’s links and sports news.