Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Women gain more voice in podcasting; three Afro-American women add color to Seattle’s podcast scene; are streaming music services re-calibrating to reduce free listening? Continue Reading
The National Association of Broadcasters’ (NAB’s) Pilot research division has complete a survey of FM capability in U.S. smartphones sold in 2015. While FM reception continues to advance in the U.S. smartphone footprint, it remains mostly absent, and one unfortunate fact is likely to keep it that way. Continue Reading
Media conglomerate E.W. Scripps has acquired podcast listening app Stitcher from global music service Deezer, which acquired Stitcher in October, 2014. The acquisition places Stitcher within Midroll Media, a podcast distribution and sales company, which Scripps purchased in July of last year. We spoke to Midroll exec Lex Friedman about what this means for Midroll Media. Continue Reading
In a keynote interview at MIDEM over the weekend, Pandora CEO Tim Westergren talked about Pandora’s plan to build an on-demand service to complement its market-leading streaming radio platform, and the company’s support of the music industry. Along the way, Westergren reiterated his company’s explicit mission to replace broadcast radio, and why that’s a good thing for listeners and musicians. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio has announced streaming stations that focus on hits from single years. Called Class of Radio, the idea is to pick your graduation year. In our test, we heard an ad-free station sponsored by a student loan refinancing company — a nice campaign tie-in. Continue Reading
Adlarge Media announced that it has inked idobi Network to its portfolio of audio publishers represented by the New York-based company. idobi is the 6th-ranked streaming radio outlet in the company, and has been online for over 15 years. (idobi also was a winner of the annual RAIN Internet Radio Awards, in 2014.) Continue Reading
On-demand audio platform audioBoom has been chosed by the producers of hit podcast Undisclosed to exclusively represent the show in an exclusive premium ad sales agreement. The completed first season of Undisclosed generated over 80-million listens.
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Nearly four out of five podcast listeners stream their shows, rather than downloading them, according to new survey results from Edison Research and Triton Digital. Yet metrics are still keyed to downloads, as with the Podtrac Ranking released last week. In addition, some podcast apps make streaming difficult.
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Digitally Imported (DI.fm), the electronic music destination, today announced that it has launched its track purchase program, completing an ambitious reinvention of its service as a one-stop portal for whatever kind of music consumption the user prefers. Continue Reading
The Podcast Consumer, an annual research report from Edison Research and Triton Digital and released today, represents the 12th year of podcast research conducted by Edison. This year’s report reveals a jump from incremental podcast adoption seen for several years. “This year, we saw a spike we haven’t seen before,” said Tom Webster of Edison Research, who presented a webinar. Continue Reading
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The paid subscription model presents an opportunity for podcasting, and an experimentation phase seems to be underway now, and accelerating. Different networks are taking different slants in setting up paywalls. There are parallels with the streaming music business.
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Podtrac, a podcast audience measurement company since 2005, today released the first monthly ranking of podcast shows and networks. Called the Podcast Industry Audience Rankings, the report is not just the first in a series for Podtrac, but the first ranker of its type for podcasting that we are aware of. It’s fascinating, even as questions abound. Continue Reading