The five most-read articles of last week: iTunes Radio advertising on ... FM radio; Triton Digital local ratings system for streaming media gains accreditation; The INfinite Dial 2014 reviews; Apple announces CarPlay; Spotify acquires The Echo Nest.
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In a very interesting, potentially impactful maneuver, Samsung has launched a new streaming music service. Called Milk Music, the mobile-only app does not require any sort of registration or payment, and is ad-free. The music is powered by Slacker. Milk Music is available as an Android app only to selected Samsung phones, of which there exist about 200-million on the street.
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Anthony Bay, appointed CEO of on-demand music service Rdio, will speak at RAIN Summit West on April 6 in Las Vegas. Anthony Bay was appointed CEO of Rdio in December after a five-month search. He was formerly GM of the Digital Media Division at Microsoft. Rdio's business alliance with Cumulus Media creates a major entity that straddles across broadcast and Internet audio.
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Patrick Reynolds of Triton Digital writes about the death of cinema icon Harold Ramis, and the coming of spring in the audio listening industry. In Groundhog Day, Ramis meditates on how to life live during a seemingly endless winter. As winter drags on in real life, Reynolds counts blessings in an optimistic look at how the field is evolving.
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The acquisition of The Echo Nest by Spotify represents an important potential alteration in the anatomy of streaming music services. The Echo Nest has a broad footprint in the industry, we wondered what the acquisition means for the many music services which rely on The Echo Nest, and their millions of users users, who, even if they don't know it, are really listening to The Echo Nest.
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Earlier this week we uncovered an iTunes Radio ad (read live by a DJ) on WKLB-FM, a Boston station owned by Greater Media. If you owned a radio station (and if you do own one) would you run ads for iTunes Radio? (If you work for a station, are you running those ads?) Vote your opinion.
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This is Part 2 of a two-part blog entry. "After a couple of decades of us living in a 200+ channel television universe, we're getting back to three networks again! In this world, there are parallels and differences here for radio to pay attention to." Founding editor Kurt Hanson analyzes changes in media consumption.
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Earlier this week, RAINNews reported that an FM station in Boston – WKLB – is running spots for iTunes Radio. The spots are live reads, done by radio station personalities. When asked, the station, owned by Greater Media, issued a statement that kind of sounded like: “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” This doesn’t seem like an especially well thought-out strategy.
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Market-leading Internet radio service Pandora released its monthly audience metrics for January today, showing year-over-year growth in its key metrics. In the short month of February, Pandora reports a larger audience and greater listening share over January's metrics. Listening hours dropped a bit, but were essentially flat month-over-month.
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In joint press release, Spotify and The Echo Nest announced this morning that Spotify has acquired The Echo Nest. Spotify is a leading interactive, on-demand music service. The Echo Nest is the leading music intelligence tech company, providing technology that powers song recommendations to over 400 listening platforms.
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