Otto Radio has secured an investment from Samsung NEXT, the venture capital arm of the tech conglomerate. Otto Radio offers audio streams of podcasts and audio news centered on a particular listener’s own interests; think of the concept as Pandora for podcasts. The investment lines up with Otto’s launch of the Otto Everywhere API, which lets other companies access that personalized audio stream. Continue Reading
“Music consumption is at an all-time high,” according to Nielsen Music’s 2016 U.S. Year-End Report. The analysis reveals that 2016 was another year with strong streaming growth and some compelling trends for albums. The entire music industry posted a 3.1% increase in overall volume, with total album consumption reaching 560.7 million units. Continue Reading
Deezer has hired Pascal De Mul as its chief partnerships officer. In this role, De Mul will be responsible for building Deezer’s relationships with telecoms, hardware companies, and other partners. Continue Reading
David Frear, CFO for Sirius XM, has quashed the latest rumors about the satellite radio company acquiring Pandora. “With respect to all the chatter about [these] acquisitions, you have to look at them as them not being likely,” Frear said Continue Reading
The Entertainment Retailers Association has released its 2016 report, and the findings add to the body of numbers pointing to rapid streaming growth in the UK. The report named music as the country’s fastest-growing entertainment sector, with sales growing 4.6% over the previous year to £1.1 billion ($1.3 billion). Continue Reading
Nielsen has released its Total Audience Report for Q3 2016. Radio inched back up to its Q3 2014 levels of 1:52 in media consumption in an average day. Live TV still holds the lion’s share at 4:06. During the period, AM/FM radio had a monthly reach of nearly 263.84 million, up from 260.43 million in the year-ago period. Continue Reading
A collective of record labels, streaming platforms, and advocacy organizations leveraged the CES spotlight to announce a commitment to high-resolution (hi-res) audio streaming. The loosely-articulated mission continues an industry trend whose mileposts have been as varied as Neil Young’s Pono venture, Tidal’s hi-res streaming subscription service, and the small but notable resurgence of vinyl records. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio has officially launched its two new streaming audio services, rolling them out widely after a month of testing. The two services emerging from beta are iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access Powered By Napster. Both were introduced in December; RAIN News conducted a review of the new features. Continue Reading
SESAC has been acquired by the Blackstone Group. The collection and licensing society bills itself as the only one in the U.S. handling public performance, mechanical, synchronization and other rights under a single umbrella. Financial details of the acquisition have not been revealed, but the deal is projected to close by the end of Q1 2017. Continue Reading
Everybody seems to want SoundCloud to be acquired, though the company itself does not publicly contribute to speculation. The latest? A report of unnamed sources saying Google is now investigating a SoundCloud purchase. Continue Reading
BuzzAngle Music issued an annual report about music consumption in 2016. Overall music consumption increased 4.9% over 2015, from 394.5 million album project units to 413.9 million project units. Streaming consumption skyrocketed up 82.6% to 250 billion streams for the year. Continue Reading
Yesterday we posted the #1 story for 2016, based on readership of our articles. Today, the RAIN News roundup of how the online audio industry evolved in 2016. Seventy-four articles show the development of internet radio, music services, small webcasting, podcasting and the business ecosystem surrounding all of it in 2016. Happy browsing! Continue Reading