Spotify hosted a training program focused on helping women of color to make their own podcasts. The Sound Up Bootcamp selected ten applicants out of 18,000 to participate in the training where they workshopped ideas for podcasts to share their own stories and perspectives. Continue Reading
The Washington Post has developed its own internal technology for putting ads into podcasts. Rhapsocord is a dynamic ad insertion tool that can automatically identify pre-roll, midroll, and post-roll spots in a show, then add the spot and update the file. Continue Reading
Founded by an executive from a technology company and a leading audio producer, the audio buying and creative agency Trisonic announced its launch today. The launch is promoted as bringing a “new alternative” to the audio media market for the first time in a decade. Continue Reading
Drake continues to exert dominance over the music landscape with a new album that has broken records and demonstrated how extensively streaming has changed the role of longstanding industry standards and expectations. Scorpion dropped on June 29, and it quickly racked up enough streams to crack multiple records. The double album now holds the single-day streaming records for Spotify and Apple Music. Continue Reading
Tencent is slowly progressing with its plan to spin out its music branch into a standalone business that will eventually list in the United States. The latest move from the entertainment conglomerate was a filing this weekend with the Hong Kong stock exchange announcing its proposed change that would see Tencent Music Entertainment Group become a separate entity. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s Future of Radio is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: Updates from the radio and audio industry come from Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, and much more. Continue Reading
Digital music services company Kobalt announced that it has hired Rian Liebenberg as its new chief technology officer. He joins the business after holding several officer posts at Schibsted ASA and Schibsted Media Group. Continue Reading
Sonos has filed an IPO. According to the paperwork, the wireless speaker company is looking to raise up to $100 million with the public offering. It said that as of March 31, it has sold 19 million products to 6.9 million households. Continue Reading
UK media company Global and its programmatic advertising platform DAX received two certifications from UK-based JICWEBS, an oversight organization focused on developing standards for digital advertising. The specific Global and DAX certifications are for Brand Safety, and absence of Ad Fraud. Continue Reading
Nielsen has released its 2018 mid-year music report, and the analysis shows overall growth in music consumption as streaming continues to post bigger and bigger numbers. Total album equivalent consumption — which includes all of Nielsen’s metrics for albums, tracks, on-demand audio, and on-demand video — rose 18.4% on-year to 360.1 million. Continue Reading
Radio consultant and podcast entrepreneur Mark Ramsey has announced his next program venture, a six-part “biopic without pictures” podcast series about Louis Armstrong called Pops. The show has started production, and will launch in 2019. Continue Reading
The UK audio production industry has launched a new trade association. The Radio Independent Group has rebranded and relaunched itself as AudioUK. The RIGtrain branch for training and skills development is now called Audiotrain. Continue Reading