Radio group Cumulus Media and online music service Rdio forged their partnership last September, so yesterday’s earnings call from publicly traded Cumulus could be approached as a one-year anniversary of the terrestrial/online hook-up. In year-over-year growth in ad revenue, digital led the way, and Rdio led digital. Continue Reading
Intentionally named, The FIX promotes itself as an antidote: “Charleston’s answer to boring radio.” That’s Charleston, South Carolina. If you live around there, you want to know about The FIX for its focus on local bands and events. If you don’t, you want to tune in this pureplay station for the carefully curated alt-rock programming. Continue Reading
We announce the results of RAIN Polls after one week. But we don’t shut down the polls after publishing the results. In some cases they remain active through search engines and social pointers. When that happens we revisit and update the results. Continue Reading
iHeartMedia has proposed reducing the royalty rate webcasters pay to artists and labels, cutting the existing rate set for terrestrial webcasters by 80 percent. The suggested royalty amount is less than half of Pandora’s suggested rate, which in turn is about half the rate suggested by SoundExchange, which represents music labels. iHeart’s argument is based on its negotiated deal with Warner Music Group, which provides lower royalty rates in exchange for greater exposure of Warner music. Continue Reading
Crowdsourced listening platform 8tracks upgraded its web browser interface, pushing new features for both sides of the 8tracks equation — listeners and playlist creators. We spoke with Founder asnd CEO David Porter to understand what’s new. Continue Reading
Sponsored by AudioBoom
A six-minute blast of news you need to know in streaming music and online audio. This week: RAIN Summit Europe, Taylor Swift and Spotify, SoundCloud and Warner Music, licensing news, Beats Music on airplanes, a new podcast network, and streaming audiobooks. Continue Reading
Advertising and monetization of streaming audio was a key topic at RAIN Summit Europe (Nov. 4 in London). In the “Streaming Ad Sales Strategies” panel, programmatic advertising got a lot of attention. Read highlights and listen to the entire panel. Continue Reading
Thanks to sponsoring partner AudioBoom, the audio recordings of RAIN Summit Europe (Nov. 4 in London) were posted in nearly real-time. Below is the AudioBoom playlist of the whole day’s sessions. Stay tuned for videos, coming soon. Also, in days to come we will post reports of key panels, quotes, news, Twitter updates, and other details from RAIN’s third annual European trade conference for the online audio industry. Continue Reading
Pop princess Taylor Swift remains one of the most visible holdouts on Spotify and she has taken a bold action in the ongoing fight between artists and streaming platforms. She withheld her much-anticipated album 1989 from Spotify upon its initial release on Oct. 27. Today, she has chosen to remove her entire back catalog from the platform as well. Continue Reading
Media technology company WideOrbit announced the hiring of Brian Burdick as EVP of Digital and Programmatic. Burdick will step in as head of WO Central, the company’s buying and selling platform, as well as recent acquisitions Fivia, Abacast, and Admeta. WideOrbit is investing aggressively in acquisitions and talent. Click through for details. Continue Reading
Triton Digital announed today that it is DAAST-compliant, among the first technology providers to fully adopt the proposed audio advertising standard. DAAST was developed by the IAB and its Digital Audio Ad Serving Template Working Group. Triton’s announcement applies to its recently launched Tap advertising platform, released in September. DAAST is a technical ecosystem in which advertisers, publishers, agencies, and consumer playback devices are aligned to coherently deliver and track streaming audio advertising. Continue Reading
Will the Future of Audio panel at RAIN Summit Europe, Nov. 4 in London, answer every question facing the industry? Possibly! For sure, it will be a fascinating discussion with an expert panel representing different dimensions of audio. We reached out to the panelists to capture glimpses of the future. Continue Reading