The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), a three-judge government panel charged with setting U.S. rules for music licensing and royalty rates, has posted a proposal for a change in webcast record-keeping and reporting to SoundExchange. Broadcast law attorney David Oxenford explains why every webcaster should be aware of the proposal, and participate in the call for comment. Continue Reading
Google expanded its streaming-music service into the Canadian market. The inelegantly-named Google Play Music All Access service is now available in 26 countries. Canada is a music-starved regional frontier, and Canadian music-lovers complain about poor choice of music services compared to their American neighbors. Continue Reading
Pandora’s audience grew in April, but not enough for investors, apparently, as the stock was down three percent at 10:00 AM this morning. As always, Pandora revealed three measurements in the monthly report: Active listeners, Listener hours, and Share of total U.S. radio listening. Continue Reading
Pandora announced the launch of Promoted Stations, a new music recommendation unit that features sponsor-branded listening stations by Taco Bell, Skechers, Toyota, and several other advertisers that have signed onto the program. The new ads are cycling through about 10% of Pandora’s listeners. Continue Reading
The most opulent presentation of advertising creative offered by Pandora is a combination of an interstitial commercial (either audio or video, positioned between songs) followed by a visual display. We recently spotted BMW doubling down on that commercial opportunity with two ads for the i3 model within a 30-minute listening period. Continue Reading
UPDATE: Not as dead as originally thought, according to Bloom’s CEO. British streaming-music service Bloom.fm abruptly went out of business after its primary investor withdrew funding, according to Bloom’s Tumblr blog announcement. Bloom.fm had been operating for a little over one year, and had acquired 1.1-million registered users. Continue Reading
Song-skipping is a persuasive feature of personalized radio and on-demand services, driving about 50 percent of user, according to one study. Paul Lamere, director of the developer platform at The Echo Nest (now part of Spotify), analyzed millions of users and billions of song plays to tease out how quickly and often we skip songs. Continue Reading
Internet Radio Rewind is a weekly program bringing you a quick and concise catch-up of the week’s top stories. Click the Play button, and be ready for the coming week. This week: Sprint and Spotify tie the knot … Royalty-free radio … One music service dies a quick death (maybe) … Rdio makes news … and a 100-day report from Beats Music Continue Reading
RAIN Hotspots features the most-read articles of the week. This week — Kurt Hanson’s latest blog post; an in-depth conversation with Brian Lakamp, head of digital for Clear Channel; a radio group goes to court to avoid paying royalties, and Beats Music is 100 days old. Continue Reading
RadioIO, a streaming music service that provides a consumer-facing product and also provides music to businesses, acquire CrowdStream, which connects performing bands with their fans. Also this week, RadioIO launched consumer listening apps in the Apple and Android app stores. Continue Reading
One recipient of the recently-bestowed Edward R. Murrow Awards is Portland Radio Project, an Internet radio stream and website hub that received two Murrow commendations. RAIN spoke with two members of PRP’s founding team about the mission and operation of an Internet-only radio project focused on local community. Continue Reading
Beats Music put out a dedicated iPad app yesterday. Newsworthy? Well, it is for users who have begged, pleaded, and demanded an iPad version of the music service app. There is consistency across Android and iOS — generally a good thing for multi-device users. Continue Reading