The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which advocates for digital radio transmission and tracks its progress, has released Market Insights: Digital Radio 2016. The report summarizes policy, technology, highlight content offerings, and the roll-out progress across 21 regions. Continue Reading
Facebook is not a very musical service, and has never seemed to care about audio content. Now, though, a report emerges that the 1.5-billion-user social platform is working with Warner Music to test a new product called Slideshow. Continue Reading
Increasingly vocal critics of YouTube have a heroic new champion, not new to the cause, but willing to dramatically escalate its rhetoric. Five-time Grammy-winner Maria Schneider, who has testified before Congress on “safe harbor” issues that affect musicians, released two blazingly critical documents. Together they comprise the harshest and most articulate indictment of an anti-YouTube stance taken by an increasing number of music rights-holders. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: One ex-radio career news specialist decries the downfall of an award-winning station; pirates interfere with licensed radio; Microsoft kills off its in-phone radio tuner. Continue Reading
VuHaus, the public radio music video destination (profiled by RAIN News in January) is nearing its one-year anniversary. To celebrate, it plans to live-stream part of the NON-COMM Convention in Philadelphia on May 19. In January VuHaus obtained a renewal of its operating grant from CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting). Continue Reading
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Audience measurement in podcasting is the most notorious issue that producers and network distributors face. But, infamous though podcast analytics are, not everybody is unhappy. One thing for sure though: Data drives digital audio forward. Continue Reading
U.K. Culture Secretary John Whittingdale addressed the British House of Commons today, and released a whitepaper, laying out operational and programming principles that will formulate the next BBC Royal Charter — that is, in Whittingdale’s words, the constitutional basis for the BBC. The next 11-year term of the charter begins in 2017. Continue Reading
Eddie Sotelo, popularly called Piolin, has signed with new podcast network reVOLVER, which programs and targets the Spanish-language audience. ReVOLVER launched in February with bilingual on-demand audio aimed at a multicultural audience. The startup will assume exclusive distribution and ad representation of the Mexican’born star’s podcast. Continue Reading
Comedy has been part of music services for years, though it doesn’t get much trade ink. While you can listen to tracks from comedy albums in music services, there are problems which combine to under-serve comedy fans. A new startup aims to fix those problems with a dedicated comedy streaming service that has unique technology under the hood. Continue Reading
Digital audio advertising platform TargetSpot announced an alliance with LiveRamp, a tech company that helps advertisers connect with targeted audience segments. The deal becomes part of a complex data ecosystem which lifts streaming audio above linear audio in its ability to target precise audience groups and satisfy advertiser demand for data-rich audio campaigns. Continue Reading
Australian company Omny announced that is has developed podcast consumption analytics as part of Omny Studio, its publishing and hosting platform for on-demand audio. The intent of new analytics is to raise the game from traditional download metrics to a more granular view of how the programs are listened to. The company would like to develop an industry-wide standard. Continue Reading
iHeartMedia President Rich Bressler called digital “a nice add-on to broadcast radio,” particularly in the social outreach of its main brand and its hundreds of stations. And he had more to say about programmatic advertising keeping the company in parity with natively digital media. Continue Reading