Taylor Swift made major waves in the music world in 2014 when she pulled her entire catalog off Spotify and other streaming services with free listening. Now the pop icon is at it again, with a plan to withhold her upcoming album Reputation from streaming services for at least a week after it releases on November 10. Continue Reading
Triton Digital has released its Top 20 Ranker of the best-performing digital audio publishers and networks for August 2017. Due to Veteran’s Day and post-Summit travel, RAIN News’ usual complete coverage and historical trendline of the latest monthly results will be posted on Monday. Continue Reading
Google Assistant is getting its own song recognition software. The technology was first available on the Pixel smartphones last month, but it is now rolling out to all other Android mobile devices. Continue Reading
Spotify has shared a report investigating the range of music its members listen to on the streaming service. Using its own internal data, the company said that Spotify listeners are hearing 37% more artists than they were in 2014. That’s an increase from nearly 30 artists streamed per week to about 41 artists streamed per week. Continue Reading
E.W. Scripps hosted its earnings call for the third quarter of 2017, which included updates for podcasting business Midroll Media. The media company posted revenue of $216 million, down from $233 million in the year-ago period. Digital revenue, which includes Midroll, was up 13.3% to $17.8 million. Continue Reading
Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio platform has launched its first Spanish-language show. “Trap Kingz” will air every two weeks, with a focus on the trap genre. Puerto Rican artist and trap specialist Bad Bunny will host the first six episodes of the program. Continue Reading
AdsWizz announced that it has been chosen as the audio partner for all direct and programmatic sales for the web radio and podcasts of media sales house Mediamond. The Italy-based business will use AdsWizz’s audio ad-tech products for serving advertisements, connecting and managing programmatic demand sources, and analytics. Continue Reading
Apple has reported its financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter ending September 30. Quarterly revenue for the tech giant was $52.6 billion, up 12% year-on-year. Earnings for the period also rose 24% to $2.07 per diluted share. Continue Reading
Spotify has hired a new leader for its public relations team. Dustee Jenkins will be the streaming service’s top communications official, joining Spotify from the same role at retailer Target. Continue Reading
Several Russian social media networks are adjusting their policies for use of music on their websites. Social platforms VKontakte and Odnoklassniki and music service Boom will only allow 30 minutes of access a day. Paid listeners have no restrictions on their time. Continue Reading
Pandora reached third-quarter revenue of $378.6 million, up 8% over the year prior. The audio company’s paid tiers generated 4.01 million subscribers in Q3 2016, rising about 29% to 5.19 million subscribers in Q3 2017. More than 1 million of those subscribers are part of the full on-demand Pandora Premium tier. Continue Reading
Sonos is adding support for playing Spotify via Alexa voice commands on its speakers beginning December 21. The news came from a support forum post. Neither its current speakers with an Echo Dot nor the new Sonos One are able to use voice controls to play music from Spotify. Continue Reading