Apple’s universal distribution of U2’s new album — the controversy that won’t die. As the dust slowly settles, we’d like to know how it shakes out for you, whether you’re an Apple device user or not. Was the free (and forced) album a huge blunder? Or is all the complaining a waste of bandwidth? Vote your opinion! Leave a survey comment, too — as always, selected comments will be published with the poll results. Continue Reading
BIA Kelsey released its annual Local Media Forecast for 2015, moving its publication timing to the fall “to align with the annual strategic planning season.” The report breaks out predicted spending growth and decline for a few broad categories, and forecasts the overall local ad-spending market to 2019. Continue Reading
Research from Localytics confirmed that mobile is still the rising trend for music services. In the company’s analysis of app usage over the past year, people spent 79% more time in their music programs, which translates to 64 more minutes per month. Compare that with the average increase of 21% for time spent across all apps. The next closest category to music was health and fitness, which posted a 51% rise for time spent in-app. Continue Reading
Podcast listening is a big deal — that’s the key message from Edison Research as it continues to divulge new aspects of its “Share of Ear” study, released to subscribers in June. Continue Reading
RAIN News founding editor Kurt Hanson delivered his semi-annual State of the Industry Address at RAIN Summit Indy last week. In addition to expected Star Trek references, and a disconcerting Star Wars mention, Hanson drew trendlines, isolated an important consumer demand across all media, targeted problems with certain industry products, and suggested solutions. Continue Reading
In its most recent Local Commerce Monitor (LCM), an ongoing survey of advertising behaviors among small and local businesses (SMBs), BIA Kelsey found high ranking for ROI (return on investment) when advertising in streaming radio. More survey participants rated streaming radio highly for ROI than they did for over-the-air (OTA) radio. Continue Reading
At RAIN Summit Indy last week, Jeff Wender, Nielsen SVP of Digital, spoke on the Big Data panel, during which he fielded this question from the audience: “Could you give us an update about where Arbitron [Nielsen Audio] is in measuring streaming radio, and what we can potentially see in the future?” Nielsen president Steve Hasker divulged more detail at a Goldman Sachs conference. Continue Reading
Month-over-month webcast listening was flat in July, according to Triton Digital’s monthly Webcast Metrics Top 20 Ranker. Our analysis also looks at the year-to-date view, and (for the first time), a three-year that incorporates Pandora’s monumental listening growth. In percentage terms, Clear Channel has nearly kept pace. Continue Reading
AT&T’s Drive Studio and Ericsson released a study that found that connected car services were of high importance for prospective auto buyers. The survey targeted customers who were likely to buy a car within the next five years, and the respondents were located in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Japan, and China. The results showed that half of all those surveyed would switch car brands to get connected car services, and 72% would delay their purchase by a year in order to get those services from their preferred brand. Continue Reading
In a special presentation at RAIN Summit Indy on Tuesday, Larry Rosin, President of Edison Research, broke out new statistics from the “Share of Ear” study conducted earlier this year, and initially summarized in June. Attempting to quantify how American adults listened to audio from all sources, Share of Ear attributed 11.6% of listening to Internet Radio — in the study context, that meant both non-interactive services like Pandora, and interactive services like Spotify. In the RAIN Summit presentation, Larry Rosin unpacked that metric to illuminate more detailed findings. Continue Reading
When an Internet station in Saint Louis picketed a newspaper for eliminating the station from a reader’s choice award of best radio stations, we decided to poll RAIN readers on the crucial question: Is Internet radio “real radio”? The results are definitive, with 70% of responses say: Yes, it is. Click through to see selected comments. Continue Reading
Midia Research released a report called The Streaming Effect, which gathers some penetration and consumer behavior metrics into a cogent state-of-the-industry message, with a future forecast. Midia founder Mark Mulligan sent us a copy of the subscription report. Continue Reading