In today’s RAIN News we cover an Internet radio station in Saint Louis which was denied a “Best of Saint Louis” reader-survey award, despite having the votes, because “Internet radio is not real radio.” Is the Saint Louis newspaper which ran the contest correct? Or is Internet radio a legitimate form of “real” radio? Vote your opinion! Continue Reading
Billboard reported on weekly album sales today from Soundscan, noting benchmark low performance, and identifying long-term trends. They key bullet point is 3.97-million units sold in the latest reporting week — the first time album sales have dipped under 4-million. Continue Reading
A new buy-side survey from STRATA indicates that advertising demand for online radio advertising increased 53% from a year ago. During the same time frame, there is a 45% increase of interest in streaming video. Sixty-seven percent of ad agencies polled said the greatest interest among client advertisers was video. Continue Reading
IFPI Denmark released a year-over-year comparison of streaming uptake in the first half of each year. Streaming increased 40 percent, from 45% of music conumption to 63%. The Denmark metrics align with the top line of Nielsen Audio’s most recent year-over-year report, which shows 42% increase in U.S. streaming. that number included video streaming. Continue Reading
Do you want to hear more than music on your favorite pureplay streaming service? The findings from a study by Bridge Ratings indicate that many people are content with the status quo of songs only. “Adding news or commuter traffic content is likely not going to enhance the experience for most users of these services,” said Dave Van Dyke, Bridge Ratings’ president. Continue Reading
Juniper Research projected that revenue for digital music will be slow to rise from an estimated $12.3 billion in 2014 to about $13.9 billion in 2019. While listeners are likely to gravitate toward cloud-based services, Juniper’s report projected that pureplay streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora will be tested by the growth of personalized music services from Apple and Google. Continue Reading
The June data from comScore revealed that 25 percent of the service’s active monthly unique visitors, an audience of almost 19 million, are Hispanic. That’s enough people to make Pandora the top music streaming platform for the demographic of listeners, even compared with endemic Hispanic sites such as Univision Digital. Continue Reading
NuVoodoo Media Services released new research that found Pandora and broadcast radio may have a more symbiotic relationship than expected. The survey of 1,100 in the PPM markets revealed that 62 percent of the Pandora users listened to the online radio service for at least half an hour per day, and 56 percent of Pandora users spent that much time listening to broadcast radio. Continue Reading
As in previous years, webcasting inched backward in June by three percent in Triton Digital’s Webcast Metrics Top 20 Ranker. Across the top-20 cohort total listening dropped three percent from May to June. Pandora lost ground and ESPN gaines. Click through for RAIN’s analytical charts. Continue Reading
Viacom’s music group, comprised of MTV, VH1, and CMT, released summary results of survey exploring how teenagers and adults up to age 40 consume music. A survey population of 1,200 participants submitted to the quantitative study. Streaming was revealed as a mainstream behavior in the survey responses, with 78% of the group having streamed music in the past three months. Continue Reading
Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, released a new market report that included data on Brits’ radio listening habits. The report found that live radio broadcasts accounted for the majority of most adults’ total listening time, but the figures were drastically different for the 16 to 24-year-old age bracket. Continue Reading
YouTube is the world’s largest distributor of streaming music, and an important music-discovery platform. Does extreme YouTube music popularity (virality) boost music sales? Nielsen takes a stab at answering that intriguing question, acknowledging that the results are inconclusive. But the graphic report is interesting. Continue Reading