Beatroot Music has raised £125,000 ($155,000) in equity funding for its work in metadata management. The financing came from Creative England, and follows a seed funding round in March 2015. Beatroot automatically generates metadata for back catalogs. Continue Reading
iHeartMedia released financial results for the third quarter. In announcing the results, iHeart’s leadership kept the focus forward on upcoming digital projects. “This quarter, we were excited to announce the reimagining of live radio with our two new subscription services, iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access,” Bob Pittman said. Continue Reading
Internet radio platform SHOUTcast has sealed a partnership with Nobex Partners, the two companies announced today. Under this arrangement, Nobex will make available white label mobile apps for SHOUTcast’s 73,000 stations. Continue Reading
Pandora unveiled a new look to its web version. The changes reflect Pandora’s recently revised branding and clearly integrate the key functions for its new Pandora Plus paid subscriber tier. The redesign will begin rolling out today. Continue Reading
Dash Radio is getting in the Election Day spirit, hosting a Rock the Vote pop-up station. The special station is aimed at encouraging youth voter turnout. It will only air Nov. 7-8 and is available from the Dash home page. Continue Reading
Podcast network Wondery has hired two new executives. One is a senior vice president of brand partnerships and the other is director of audience acquisition. Continue Reading
Vevo has added a new feature for making animated GIFs from its hosted music videos. Not all videos in the library are available for creation of the five-second looping clips at launch, but Vevo said it is working to have the rights to include as many as possible. Continue Reading
Drake has been a huge force in the U.S. music scene this year with the release of new album, Views. Music Ally made some calculations and determined that the Canadian rapper’s latest album has hit some impressive milestones on both Spotify and YouTube. The numbers this album is putting up are yet another reminder of how critical it is for charts to consistently account for streaming data in assessing an album’s success. Continue Reading
Today brings an announcement from iHeartRadio that it has hired ex-TheBlaze, ex-TuneIn exec Chris Peterson as Senior Vice President of Podcasting. the announcement was made via an internal company memo. Peterson will oversee iHeartRadio’s overall podcast strategy and grow its profile in the podcast community. Continue Reading
The death of legendary performer Prince earlier this year left a hole in the hearts of his scores of devoted fans. It has also created some legal turmoil about who will emerge with the rights to Prince’s vast music catalog. Universal Music Publishing Group bought the rights last week, but it now faces an unexpected hurdle before the deal can be closed. Continue Reading
After months of silence, Electric Jukebox has reportedly raised £1.4 million. The company is a hybrid streaming service that seems to combine a Chromecast-style dongle with an online radio listening experience. Continue Reading
The U.S. music industry is petitioning its European counterparts to make copyright reforms that would address royalty payments made by online music distribution services. Several music industry organizations signed an open letter about the value gap in services that do a great deal of user traffic but make comparatively small royalty payments. It asks U.S. government representatives in Europe to support Article 13 of the Copyright Directive proposed by the European Commission. Continue Reading