Pandora Stories is a music/spoken-word hybrid product which pairs songs with artist recollections. In most cases the artists talks for 30-60 seconds about the song’s history (that’s the story part), and then comes the song. Pandora has now produced 1,000 of these stories. To celebrate, the streaming service has created a “The Greatest Hits” compilation. Click through for details and audio. Continue Reading
In a zoom webinar yesterday, Edison Research Senior Vice President Tom Webster laid out some metrics about podcast listening before and during the covid-19 era. The session was part of a lunchtime series from Edison. Deploying recent research from the company’s Podcast Consumer Tracking Report and the ongoing Share of Ear consumer survey project, Webster described some changes in American podcast listening. The underlying premise why that the disruption of routines, especially the widespread loss of morning commuting in cars, has made significant changes in how much, and when, Americans listen to podcasts. Click through for more. Continue Reading
Episode 15 of Pod Drop, RAIN’s flash briefing of new podcasts, has dropped today. As always, the fun and highly-produced five-minute show previews three new podcasts. Hear show excerpts mixed with review descriptions, hosted by RAIN president Brad Hill. Continue Reading
American public media has formed a partnership with revolver podcasts, a Spanish-language specialty podcast Network. The partnership is a effort for APM to reach multicultural audio consumers. reVolver Podcasts specializes in the latino podcast market. Continue Reading
Back in April, Spotify blogged about musicians setting up virtual concerts as Covid-19 forced them offstage. If the company wasn’t putting two + two together at that time, it might be now. That is an easy conclusion to draw from hacker and reverse engineer Jane Manchung Wong, who uncovered non-public screens within the Spotify app indicating live virtual concert streaming in development. Continue Reading
In a burst of platform development, ad-tech company AdsWizz has introduced seven new targeting and advertising efficacy features. The company is positioning the new features as helpful to both publishers (the sell side) and advertisers (the buy side). Leading the… Continue Reading
by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro provides news and commentary about Lemonada’s ad rep move, Joe Budden’s apparent separation from Spotify, Audible’s new plan, Joe Rogan and Apple … and an interview with Jessica Cordova Kramer. Continue Reading
Magellan AI has posted its Top 15 spenders, movers & shakers list for July. NBCUniversal is perched as the biggest advertiser, mainly for Peacock, its new streaming TV app which launched on July 15 — $668-thousand was spent across 69 shows to promote Peacock. Click through to hear one of its ads. Turner Broadcasting and Quibi also received spotlight treatment from Magellan. Continue Reading
We couldn’t help noticing an Apple job listing for Apple Podcasts Manager. Russia does not appear on Apple’s corporate list of countries and regions, but maybe it will soon. We looked at Apple’s podcast chart for Russia, and discovered a couple of interesting finds. Click through for deets. Continue Reading
Taking TilTok seriously yet, as a music exposure, promotion, and distribution platform? Well TikTok is, and so is Ollie Wards if we go by his just-announced job change. Wards is leaving his post at Triple J, the nationally funded alternative music radio outlet in Sydney, Australia, for an appointment as music director in Australia ast TikTok. Continue Reading
We heard from Podcast Radio CEO Gerard Edwards that his company, the all-podcast DAB+ station, is raising a crowdfunded equity campaign on the Seedrs platform. Podcast Radio values itself on Seedrs as a 2.3-million British pound-valued company, and is offering 4.16% equity across this campaign. Click through for more details. Continue Reading
In what should be a treat for synesthetes, Pandora has released seven interesting playlists intended to demonstrate a relationship between sound and color. Unsurprisingly to those who know of his work, Steve Keller (Sonic Strategy Director at Pandora) is involved in the project and authored an explanatory blog post. Keller invokes Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, who asserted that music and color could not be separated. Keller’s thesis is that Kandinsky wasn’t being metaphoric — there is a scientific basis to tyiong together these two sensual perceptions. Click through for a link to the playlists. Continue Reading