Brief news items and worthy reads around the Internet:
Mark Mulligan on Rhapsody: MIDiA Research founder Mark Mulligan reflects on the long business path undertaken by on-demand music service Rhapsody, and concludes that it is a “top tier player” again. Why again? Because Rhapsody, though owning a smaller audience than Spotify and Deezer, started the music subscription business with its 2001 launch. [Music Industry Blog]
iBiquity pushes HD Radio: The public-media oriented site Current notes that iBiquity is pushing radio stations to put content into underutilized HD Radio bandwidth. An iBiquity exec notes than more than half of new cars have HD receivers, and about ten percent of all cars. If there is accelerating consumer adoption of HD Radio (largely via autos, since that is barely any market for stand-alone home receivers). stations should be motivated to deploy the technology for expanding their programming. There is an interesting cast study of a public station that satisfied the conflicting demands of its audience through HD Radio expansion.