Free as in "over the air radio" which isn't really free, having commercials in it is what you pay to listen. TuneIn has an audio ad that plays every time you turn it on, and video ads at the bottom of the screen. That's a fair enough price, but they want to raise the price by adding my address book to the payment. Nope, it's like cable TV. Cable stations used to have no commercials, Now there are ads on-screen even when the content is playing. It's really stupid; OTA TV fed from cable used to be a lot better picture and sound, no static, ghosts, or snow so you were paying for the content by watching ads and paying the cable company for clarity, as well as extra programming, mostly excellent and without commercials. Now that it's digital, over the air serves a better picture than cable. And cable may have hundreds of channels, but hundreds of channels I have no intention of ever watching. They think I'll pay for that? They're insane, I dropped cable over ten years ago.
I can drop TuneIn just as easily, and if it stops working without the update I'll just uninstall it*, which will make their real product less valuable. They surely have competitors.
*Then I'll email radio stations I listen to and let them know they lost a listener, and why. Most stations have their own apps anyway, TuneIn is really only useful because you only have to install the one app.