Apple’s flashy senior vice president of Internet software and services, Eddy Cue, gave an update on the subscription music service during the Code Media conference last night. Cue said Apple Music is now “well past” 20 million paying listeners. Continue Reading
Amazon has hired Alex Luke to join its music team as global head of programming and content strategy. He will report directly to Steve Boom, Amazon Music’s vice president. Continue Reading
The Q4 RAJAR data showed another period where overall radio listening held static, but digital radio grew. In the final quarter of 2016, 48.7 million adults, or 90.1% of the adult population, listened to radio stations each week. Continue Reading
Two top executives from SoundCloud have left the audio company. This is the second big personnel change for SoundCloud already this year as the company seeks an influx of cash from investors. Continue Reading
The return of Prince’s catalog on Sunday has been cause for celebration across streaming services. Today, the purple flag flies proudly at Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and more. Continue Reading
“2016 was a very significant year for Pandora, with progress on every important front. We enter 2017 with a clear set of strategic priorities and a solid plan to execute against them.” That was Pandora CEO Tim Westergren starting his company’s Q4 earnings call yesterday. Always optimistic, he laid out 2017 goals at a pivot point for the company he founded. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Stevie Wonder speaks out for radio fairness. Spotify doubling down on artist relations. Continue Reading
Prince’s catalog from Warner Bros is confirmed for release to streaming services on Sunday. NPR received word of the date from Napster, and the songs are expected to be available on most other streaming platforms as well. iHeartRadio has some purple plans for celebration. Universal has secured rights to manage the rest of Prince’s catalog. Continue Reading
Digital audio advertising sales and technology company Targetspot is announcing a new ad-serving and analytics platform called TargetSpot Passport. the platform is native to streaming audio publishers — TargetSpot lives alongside Radionomy and SHOUTcast as subsidiaries of media giant Vivendi. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Should radio still care about song sales? Super Bowl spike for Lady Gaga. Ticketmaster makes a music hire. Continue Reading
Google is combining some of its separate music teams in a move that could signal changes for its many products down the line. The groups working on YouTube Music and Google Play Music are being joined. Continue Reading
Billboard published its Power 100 list for 2017. The ranking includes several prominent leaders in the streaming music industry from companies including Apple Music, iHeartMedia, and Pandora. Spotify Chairman/CEO Daniel Ek took the No. 1 spot. Continue Reading