The long-awaited Pono Music ecosystem, Neil Young’s project, emerged from beta this week. Pono Music players will be available at Fry’s consumer electronics stores, and online. This week’s CES-timed launch closes the first, non-public chapter of Pono’s storied existance. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio announced another partnership today at CES, this one with Sony Computer Entertainment. Beginning early in the first quarter of this year, the iHeartRadio platform will arrive on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 game consoles. Continue Reading
Google is kicking off CES with a major musical announcement. The company is launching new software called Google Cast that will stream audio content directly to speakers. The initial partnerships include Pandora, Rdio, iHeartRadio, NPR One, and, unsurprisingly, Google Play Music. More tie-ups are in the works, CNET reported. Continue Reading
How are you feeling? First day back at work? Did you indulge in a last-ditch celebratory fling last night? Decompressing from a glut of cheery holiday music and New Year’s jubilance? Healing Music Radio is the ticket to post-holiday recovery. Continue Reading
SoundHound released an upgrade to its Android app, adding the ability to throw a tagged song into a Spotify playlist. Long-time users will say “Finally!” to the app refresh, which brings this essential feature in Android up to parity with SoundHound for iOS. Continue Reading
Universal Music Group has entered into a new partnership with Havas Group to form the Global Music Data Alliance. This data-centric entity will use Havas’ algorithms to analyze information about UMG artists, from ticket sales to streaming counts to social media stats, to look for new revenue opportunities. In particular, GMDA will examine behavioral data to better understand the relationships between artists, fans, and brands. Continue Reading
Audio ad-representation firm AdLarge continues a recent streak of news by announcing an exclusive national advertising sales-rep agreement with Hotspot.fm, an Internet radio app. Spokespeople for Hotspot.fm told RAIN News that the app is recently launched to the U.S. market. Continue Reading
TiVo and iHeartRadio announced a new partnership that will bring the music platform to the video and TV recording service. The radio application is slated to roll out to TiVo Roamio, TiVo Mini, and TiVo Premiere devices “over the next few weeks,” according to the press release. Continue Reading
Roger Lanctot is Associate Director of Strategy Analytics, and a thought leader in the connected-car space. In this guest article, he discusses the value of AM/FM radio on the dashboard. “Cars may be losing their CD players, but cars will definitely have radios in 2015. The only problem is that you may not be able to find the radio…” Continue Reading
Radio Disney has taken another step in the digitization of its programming, integrating Ford’s AppLink code in its mobile app. The result is integration with Ford’s SYNC dashboard, which gives drivers easy control of the app without touching the mobile device. As with other SYNC-enabled apps, Radio Disney’s product will be automatically located by the Ford system when the driver plugs the smartphone into the dashboard. Continue Reading
RAIN is pleased to present 43 predictions from 21 thought-leading guest futurists: Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Amazon Prime may roll out in India; assessing Azoff’s ammo against YouTube; in-car listening as public performance? Continue Reading