RAIN Notes: Monday, April 24
Author: Brad Hill
Smart speakers and station apps fill in for disappearing in-home radios (Jacobs Media)
As radios continue a long-term trend of disappearing from homes, radio listeners lean into smart speakers tuned into radio station streams, and dedicated station mobile apps. The info comes from Jacobs Media, which will reveal its full TechSurvey results this week during the All Access Audio Summit. Click for the data graph. Continue Reading
RAIN Notes: Friday, April 21
— Mission Accomplished (Ari Shohat)
— Evolution (Idil Miriam Cakim)
— Excitement (A.J. Feliciano)
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Four shows enter March Triton Digital Podcast Report; top ten shows the same
Only four newcomers cracked Triton Digital’s Podcast Report for March, , which ranks the top 100 podcasts by average weekly downloads. The top-10 cohort remained the same with some order shuffling. Click for lots of detail. Continue Reading
RAIN Notes: Thursday, April 20
— Crime and More Crime (iHeartPodcasts)
— Playing Ball (Tom Webster / Sounds Profitable)
— Removals (AI music)
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Audioboom 2022 financials: Double-digit growth in revenue, downloads, advertisers
Global podcast company Audioboom released its Annual Report & Financial Statements for 2022. In it, we see double-digit growth in several key metrics. Click through for metrics and insights. Continue Reading
WideOrbit launches ad sales tool to unify radio, TV, and cable selling
Media sales tech company WideOrbit has launched WO Fusion, which the firm describes as “a next-generation sales platform that creates a scalable application for broadcast TV and radio, as well as cable and broadcast network sales teams.” Continue Reading
UMG tries to block AI-generated music in 25-year flashback
Major label Universal Music Group (UMG) has asked Spotify, Apple, and other streaming platforms to block AI-generated music. Based on reporting (HERE and HERE), this is not a legal action, but an urgent request. For now, the news is framed as a request from UMG to streaming services. That stage of protest is reminiscent of major-label protests of Napster and other file-sharing platforms in the late 1990s. That tumultuous period eventually led to label lawsuits against Napster users, meant to both punish individuals and demonstrate purposeful intent to everyone. We see a significant likeness harking back to the 1990s file-sharing epoch. Click through for key facts and RAIN’s speculation. Continue Reading
Live365 makes licensing deal with entire Global Music Rights catalog for non-interactive streaming
From NAB Show: Live365, the webcasting platform within SoundStack, announces a deal with performance rights management company Global Music Rights, enabling webcasters to stream GMR music in a royalty-included plan. This means the webcasters are not liable for royalty payments to GMR-represented creators. GMR reps 142 songwriters in a catalog of 81,000 works which includes over 100 Billboard Hot 100 number-one songs. Click for more details. Continue Reading
Boomers are a tough podcast demo, but worth winning (Edison Research / NPR)
In nearly every listening metric, the Boomer generation lags younger groups when it comes to involvement in online audio generally, and podcasting specifically. That’s the conclusion of an interesting and revealing collection of data from Edison Research and NPR. Boomers act differently from younger groups in key audio-related behaviors, making older listeners clearly identifiable and attractive. Click for takeaways and a link to the study. Continue Reading
Infographic feast: Highest-earning Spotify songs per country (NetCredit)
In a spectacular data project, banking services company NetCredit has analyzed publically available Spotify play data to calculate highest-earning songs on the service, country by country. The result is a lot of data and a glorious array of detailed infographics. Click through for details. Continue Reading
RAIN Notes: Thursday, April 13