In the keynote address at RAIN Summit West on April 6th in Las Vegas, digital-media entrepreneur Jason Calacanis wowed the audience with his State of the Media presentation. Calacanis was thronged for over an hour after the speech. Click through to see all 132 slides. Continue Reading
Music service Rdio will upgrade this summer to offer ad-supported on-demand listening to its music catalog. The announcement was made by Lew Dickey, CEO of Cumulus Media, which acquired a 20-percent stake of Rdio in September, in a quarterly earnings call. Click for full quotes. Continue Reading
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) announced that a congressional majority has signed onto a resolution called the Local Radio Freedom Act. The bill opposes any change to radio’s existing and long-standing exemption from paying a performance royalty to labels and musicians, for broadcast use of recorded music. Continue Reading
Rumor has turned to reality. Two weeks ago we reported that music service Spotify and telecom carrier Sprint were talking about a bundling plan that would put Spotify in front of Sprint’s 54-million customers. Today, the deal is done. Click for details. Continue Reading
The quest for great blues finds another watering hole in Aardvark Blues. This Internet-only station had us at Ana Popovic, the Serbian blues-rocker. If you tire of the blues, the same no-nonsense programming is available from the same Aardvark outfit on the rock side, at Aardvark Rock. Continue Reading
Listening to music and acquiring music are entwined. In 2014, collecting music has a new meaning, and increasingly occurs without the need of a traditional music product — physical or virtual. What collecting music means today. Continue Reading
Big data, the term used for collections of data that are so big that special processing is needed in order to use it, is a key component of customized music services. Big data processing is important on the advertising side as well. Jennifer Lane thinks about the possibilities that big data can offer to streaming audio. Continue Reading
Yahoo has partnered with Live Nation in an agreement to co-distribute live-streamed concerts at a blistering pace — one concert a day (or night) “for several years.” Yahoo’s main competitive focus in this venture is Google, the leader in video content. Yahoo and Live Nation will funnel users to the the real-time concert stream, only highlights of which will be available later. Continue Reading
Twenty years ago today, the entire National Public Radio staff received a memo describing the Internet, and offering email accounts to everyone. In 1994 the Web had been layered atop the existing Internet, but still competed with Gopher, an earlier non-commercial search and directory service. Continue Reading
In a Hollywood Reporter interview, singer Jared Leto of the band 30 Seconds to Mars offered his thoughts about streaming music. Leto has his doubts about the sustainability of streaming for musicians. But he points a huge measure of accountability at record labels. Continue Reading
On-demand music service Rdio announced a new affiliation with Musicians for Audio Quality, headed by The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. Putting its product where its affiliation is, Rdio is dramatically upgrading its entire 25-million-track library to hi-fi … or at least higher-fi. Hi-fi mobile music is a somewhat controversial concept, but is building momentum as a trend. Continue Reading
Brian Lakamp is the President of Digital at Clear Channel, and is the product owner of iHeartRadio, which he characterizes as “the national consumer brand” of Clear Channel. In a wide-ranging phone conversation, we spoke with Lakamp about iHeart’s digital strategy, listening to radio in the car, Clear Channel’s partnerships with record labels, and operating in a “six-screen world.” Continue Reading