In what appears to be a report timed to the end of Q1, YouTube paid $4-billion in music royalties in 12 months. More than 30% of that payout to the music industry came from monetization of user-uploaded music. Continue Reading
June is Black History Month, siriusXM is marshalling its sprawling inventory of audio platforms in a combined celebration and promotion. The company, along with its Pandora and Stitcher subsidiaries, announced the launch of three exclusive limited-engagement channels, a groundbreaking original podcast, and specialty music programming. Continue Reading
Veritonic’s Audio Logo Index 2021 ranks branded sound bites with a combination of AI and a large cross-continental human panel. Click through for audio samples and top-level ranking results. Continue Reading
Publicly heralded, quietly postponed. Promised for May, now it’s June in an email to participants. Apple acknowledges problems and notes that thousands of creators and networks around the world submitted their plans for subscriptions and channels. Those business plans disrupted. Continue Reading
“Build a podcast app that users can’t put down.” That’s the pitch at podcast database and discovery service Podchaser, for the company’s newly launched API (Application Programming Interface). Podchaser is targeting the marketplace of apps servicing consumers who don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcast listening and discovery. Continue Reading
It makes sense: when employment undergoes a tectonic shift from in-office to in-home, listening trends will change. How much actually shifted during Covid? Continue Reading
In an interview at this week’s J.P. Morgan Technology, Media & Communications Conference, CEO Jennifer Witz held forth about SiriusXM’s business strategies and accomplishments. She predicted revenue growth, noted that podcasting is still small, and promised an opportunistic approach to acquisitions. Continue Reading
TikTok Radio is a headline new channel coming to SiriusXM, expanding the reach of the shortform video platform’s influence on the music industry. SiriusXM calls the new channel “groundbreaking,” and promises other collaborations across the Sirius/Pandora audio offerings. Other extensions of TikTok music already appear on Sirius-owned Pandora. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio sent out an email blast headlining 150-million registered users of the audio app, and 3-billion app downloads. The company historically does not disclose monthly average users. Continue Reading
PRX is launching Radiotopia Presents, a podcast feed of several limited-run series, starting on June 2 with Blind Guy Travels. It could be called a relaunch, and rebranding, of an earlier presentation feed called Showcase, which ran from 2017 to 2019 and featured seven podcast series. Continue Reading
by Steve Goldstein
In this guest column, Steve Goldstein reproduces a conversation with Joel Sucherman, NPR’s Vice President for New Platform Partnerships, about podcast subscriptions. Sucherman illuminates NPR’s basic strategy points, and reveals how local NPR radio stations are involved in that strategy. Continue Reading
Hi-Res audio (also called Hi-Def, HD, HiFi, and other nicknames) has been an added value feature in music streaming apps since Tidal charted that course with its 2x pricing model. Now that business model is at risk of being debunked. We test Amazon’s ULTRA HD. Continue Reading