Podtrac has launched a third podcast ranking chart. In addition to its monthly list of the top podcast publishers and the top podcasts, the company has debuted a third ranker called Top 15 Snackable Podcasts. Insight from CEO Mark McCrery. Continue Reading
The Interactive Advertising Bureau has released its report on digital advertising trends from the first half of 2017. Music streaming shows astonishing penetration of top-10 brands, when measuring time spent. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio has entered a partnership with Jibo to launch Jibo Music. The music features have been added to the Jibo product, a cross between a voice-activated smart speaker and a cute robot. Jibo owners will automatically get access to iHeartRadio music through a software update beginning on Monday. Continue Reading
Nielsen has published a new study into the effectiveness of podcast sponsorships and advertisements. The purpose was to measure “brand lift” across different measures, with a focus on comparing to video pre-roll ad effectiveness. Continue Reading
Pandora has added 250 Featured Playlists to its subscription tier. This addition is a series of playlists curated by the Pandora team centered on themes such as working out, break-ups, and romance. The playlists indicate continued development on behalf of Premium subscribers, after that service was repositioned earlier this year. Continue Reading
Investment bank (and Spotify investor) GP Bullhound released a new paper projecting that Spotify could be valued at $20 billion by the time the streaming service goes public. It also projected subscriber growth reaching 100 million by summer of 2018. As of July 2017, Spotify had 60 million subscribers. Continue Reading
Spreaker has launched its first foray into Amazon Alexa skills. The company’s entire catalog of English-language podcasts can now be accessed by voice commands on Alexa-enabled devices. That catalog includes Spreaker-hosted programs, and many popular podcasts hosted elsewhere, such as the TED Radio Hour. Continue Reading
RAIN Summit is heading to Australia! RAIN Summit Australia will take place in at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre on October 13, in collaboration with Commercial Radio Australia (CRA), and will be produced as part of Radio Alive 2017, the Australian radio industry’s annual national conference. Continue Reading
Pandora has added to the smart speaker research hitting the industry this year with the first release of information from a commissioned survey by Edison Research examining how consumers use Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices. The survey was conducted with interesting methodology, essentially reinventing the listening diary concept. Continue Reading
Australia-based Audiocraft, which describes its mission as “a community for Australian radiomakers and podcasters,” announced the creation of a new division that offers project talent for professionals in the audio industry — mainly podcasters. The creation of this agency shines a bit of light on the Australian podcasting market on the creative side. Continue Reading
Otto Radio announced the launch of a new feature dubbed Themed Stations. The company, a personalized streaming audio service, now allows users to create stations centered around more than 500,000 topics or themes. We gave the newe feature a test drive. Continue Reading
The Radio Television Digital News Association released the first part of its report series on the United States’ newsrooms. A large focus of this installment is online activity for both radio and television news. For the survey’s radio respondents, 55.5% said they started an important online venture in 2016. Continue Reading