Seven months after Taylor Swift withdrew her music from Spotify, and two days after Apple announced its subscription-only Apple Music service, Spotify has released a video which firmly defends the freemium model which offers free, ad-supported listening. The video is also remarkable for being the company’s most explicit and public-facing advocacy of free listening. Continue Reading
Spotify announced today that it has more than 20 million subscribers and 75 million active users on its streaming platform. The company started off 2015 with the announcement 60 million active users and 15 million paying subscribers, meaning Spotify grew quickly to hit this milestone. Spotify also closed a round of funding today valued at $526 million. Continue Reading
Thousands of broadcasters from around southeast Asia (primarily Malaysia, Indonesia, and other countries in the near region) — including hundreds of radio broadcasters — descended on Singapore last week for the region’s biggest broadcasting conference, BroadcastAsia2015. Kurt Hanson reports from Singapore. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Sonos CEO on streaming’s impact and NPR listeners get an F on their audio quality test. Continue Reading
Nielsen has released a Music 360 report focused on the Canadian market. The report found that time spent listening to music in Canada has risen 20% since 2013. Nielsen also found that streaming volume has increased 94% since it began tracking that metric for Canada in July 2014. Another interesting data point from that research was an assessment of how much the respondents would be willing to pay for streaming services. Continue Reading
Webcast listening rose 1% month-over-month in April, and 39% year-over-year, according to the Webcast Metrics Top 20 Ranker just released by Triton Digital. Click through for historical trend charts. Continue Reading
TargetSpot has introduced an international programmatic monetization platform called TS BlueBox. The DAAST-compliant service is designed to help create revenue for digital audio publishers with a single integrated solution. It currently includes the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Belgium, although more countries will be added later in 2015. Continue Reading
Yesterday, the world got its first official look at Apple Music, the newest player to join the streaming music field. To call it a highly-anticipated debut would be an understatement. As befits such a big announcement, the media has come forth with an intriguing mix of thoughts and opinions about what Apple is and isn’t bringing to the table. Here’s a selection of what people are saying about Apple Music. Continue Reading
The BBC announced that it has expanded its DAB coverage. Over the past two months, the broadcaster has added 11 sites to its list of supported stations. Its end goal is to cover 97% of the population by the end of 2015. Continue Reading
James Cridland Weekly Links is a column by the U.K.’s radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: James sends his bulletin from Cologne, featuring news from the BBC, Radioplayer, and U.S. public radio. Continue Reading
After a long build-up and a vast amount of speculation, Apple has finally announced Apple Music, its overhauled music offerings. Cook dubbed the new service “the next chapter in music,” and presented it as a single resource for listeners’ various musical needs. Most of the features and news shared by Tim Cook and his colleagues fell in line with the previously reported rumors on what it would look like. However, the team did clarify two of the key questions that had circled around Apple Music’s launch: a date and a price point. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio announced that it is making further inroads into living room listening with the launch of an app on TiVo. The app is available on the TiVo Roamio, TiVo Mini and the line of TiVo Premiere devices following the latest software update on that hardware. Continue Reading