In an important agreement that replaces music piracy with music industry revenue, Universal has inked a deal that will legally add its music to the Russian streaming music platform vKontakte. The agreement means that all of the major labels are working with the platform. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s Future of Radio is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: Radio’s Apollo 11 cameo; engineering shortages loom worldwide; notes from Chicago’s Podcast Movement conference; much, much more. Continue Reading
Pandora published some numbers in an article that is both a response to recent comScore audience measurement data, and part of a continuing competition with Spotify for marketing dollars spent by advertisers to reach online radio listeners. We spoke with Pandora executive Heidi Browning. Continue Reading
Apple has proposed a new royalty structure for streaming music, one that would be simpler but could create a financial pinch for freemium services. In a proposal to the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board, Apple recommended a system where all on-demand streaming services would pay songwriters a statutory rate of 9.1 cents per 100 plays. Continue Reading
On the Move tracks hires, promotions, and other notable personnel changes within the online audio industry. Today’s moves are both high-level personnel changes in Sony businesses. Continue Reading
One of the common critiques of streaming is that those platforms favor the pop and rock charts to the detriment of niche genres. A new playlisting brand aims to improve the access to classical music on the top streaming services. It’s called unCLASSIFIED, at its goal is to create dynamic playlists based on mood or activity. Continue Reading
Spotify For Brands, the company’s outreach division which promotes the free-listening service to advertisers, has released a new trove of data focused on brand awareness and listener profiling in the U.K. It is part of an ongoing The New Audio series, with survey work commissioned from TNS. Continue Reading
Chinese conglomerate Tencent announced a merger between its QQ Music unit and China Music Corp. This joint entity will run three of China’s streaming music services: QQ Music, Kugou, and Kuwo. Continue Reading
Less than a year after unveiling a major iOS redesign, Vevo is sprucing things up again. Whereas the November updates focused on aesthetics, the new changes center on discovery tools. I explored the changes on iOS. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. Today: Bob Lefsetz thinks Apple Music should have free access and Chris Price thinks singles charts should count radio play. Continue Reading
NPR is coming to iHeartRadio. According to a new deal between the public radio organization and iHeartMedia, more than 260 NPR member stations will have the opportunity to stream their live news and talk programming on iHeartRadio. Continue Reading
Rhapsody has completed its rebranding, and is now officially Napster in all markets. The rename won’t impact any listener playlists or history, but it does come with a redesigned home screen and some other discovery tools. Continue Reading