Bop.fm announced the addition of several music services to its agnostic listening platform. Pandora, Xbox Music, Rhapsody, and Napster are now a part of the program. Bop.fm allows its members to share songs across platforms, and to create playlists from music. This makes the Pandora relationship particularly interesting, since it’s a lean-back service. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: NYT on why CDs rule Japan; Dash Two on internet radio for advertising; GM narrowing focus for connected car apps. Continue Reading
Personal Audio won its patent infringement lawsuit against CBS. The company is commonly seen as a patent troll, holding intellectual property rights for what it claims is an essential part of podcasting. A jury in Marshall, Texas, supported Personal Audio’s claims and awarded it damages of $1.3 million. The company has outstanding patent suits against the FOX and NBC networks. Continue Reading
Pandora is working with car dealer Lexus to host a series of four free pop-up concerts in Southern California. According to Pandora’s press release, the streaming radio platform used its Big Data stores to determine the best artists to feature at each concert location. It will extend invitations to the Lexus Pop-Up Concert Series to Pandora listeners who enjoy the headlining musicians and similar artists. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Tim Cook talks Beats with Charlie Rose; infographic illustrates long history of music sharing; local Argentinian tax on foreign online subscription services; physical music sales up at CD Baby. Continue Reading
Shazam’s Android app now has integrations with Google Play and Google Play Music All Access. The Android marketplace is now the featured resource for buying a track tagged in Shazam. Google’s on-demand music service joins Rdio, Spotify, and Deezer as ways to stream a song you’ve identified. The streaming networks are all visible by tapping the drop-down menu with the play button icon. Continue Reading
Jason Feinberg has joined Pandora as head of artist marketing. He takes on the newly created role at the streaming service after working at Epitaph Records as vice president of digital strategy. The new job will focus on providing analytics, fan communication tools, and other resources to the artists on Pandora. Continue Reading
AT&T’s Drive Studio and Ericsson released a study that found that connected car services were of high importance for prospective auto buyers. The survey targeted customers who were likely to buy a car within the next five years, and the respondents were located in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Japan, and China. The results showed that half of all those surveyed would switch car brands to get connected car services, and 72% would delay their purchase by a year in order to get those services from their preferred brand. Continue Reading
Sirius XM shared strong subscriber growth in its second-quarter conference call, but recently increased its projections for that metric. In the call, the company predicted that it would add 1.25 million new subscribers for the year. Now it has increased that guidance, and is expecting to add 1.45 million for a total subscriber base of 27 million. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Cmd.fm turns SoundCloud into a radio stream; app for streaming Indonesian indie bands; Universal ties up with Cambodian telecom. Continue Reading
Spotify’s director of economics, Will Page, spoke at the Bigsound conference in Brisbane, Australia, about the impact of legal streaming services on piracy. His data showed that, in the year from December 2012, the volume of BitTorrent files downloaded by Australians dropped by more than 20%. Spotify launched in Australia on May 21, 2012. Since then, he said one in six Aussies have tried out the music service. Continue Reading
Pandora has signed a U.S. license agreement with music rights management company BMG for its complete catalogs of both ASCAP and BMI music. Few details about the multi-year agreement were disclosed in Pandora’s press release, but it did point to mutual business and marketing perks for all parties involved. Continue Reading