As in the car, so on Wall Street ... today. SiriusXM and Clear Channel (including iHeartRadio information) released quarterly earnings reports this morning. Pandora comes to bat at 5:00pm EDT. Here are two summaries and one preview.
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XAPPmedia announced its acquisition of a $3-million round of venture funding, led by Frank Raines, a co-founder and current Executive Chairman. The money will be invested in developing and distributing the company's flagship product, XAPP Ads.
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RAIN Summit West, held April 6 in Las Vegas, featured two major "State of..." addresses. Celebrated entrepreneur Jason Calacanis presented his annual "State of Media" deep dive, comprising 132 fact-packed slides surveying the entire media landscape. Later in the day, RAIN founder Kurt Hanson delivered his State of the Industry Address, focusing on Internet radio and online audio.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a kind of sheriff's office for civil liberties on the Internet, has received an encouraging ruling from a government office that regulates patent reviews. The judgment clears the way for the EFF to challenge the validity of a controversial lawsuit against podcaster Adam Corrola and other podcast publishers.
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The band Vulfpeck has announced an ingenious way to simultaneously launch a tour, crowdsource its funding, and manipulate its Spotify earnings -- all with a dash of humor. The key to this scheme is a newly "recorded" album called Sleepify, which has ten tracks -- each track 30 seconds long, and each one absolutely silent.
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When Pono Music completed its Kickstarter campaign with a whopping $6.2-million in crowdfunding, it motivated us to as readers whether hi-fi mobile music is important. On this site, the opinion stance has been that Pono and others are interesting ventures, but niche. Our poll results indicate stronger interest in sound quality than anticipated.
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Apple's CarPlay, a digital-dash system based on the iPhone, got more exposure at last week's New York International Auto Show, where Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, and Hyundai showed off their CarPlay integration concepts. The big question in the audio-content industry is the extent to which AM/FM radio will be displaced by Internet-delivered listening.
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The digitization of radio is an important part of the evolving media landscape, as documented by Edison Research, BIA/Kelsey, and other research organizations. On the front end, that means accommodating the consumer migration to online listening. Behind the scenes on the business end, it means bringing long-standing monetization technology from the web to broadcast.
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Pandora has hired David Grimaldi, a veteran of congress, as the Internet radio company faces music-licensing regulations on multiple fronts. Grimaldi joins Pandora at a time when the market-leading Internet radio service faces many negotiations and legal arguments related to the cost of music it streams, and the U.S. government's regulation of that cost.
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Much has been said about the 'connected dash' in recent weeks: the concern that radio has plenty to lose from forthcoming internet-connected cars, that'll offer internet radio, Spotify-like services, and plenty more. Guest columnist James Cridland says that if you're a radio broadcaster, you should start worrying right now.
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Media giant Clear Channel today announced iHeartRadio Networks, an advertising sales program that puts CC's vast, multi-medium inventory on a unified platform. The values for advertisers will be simplified media buys, greater reach, and targeting capability across different media environments.
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