MTV is making a new push to re-prioritize the music in its programming. MTV President Sean Atkins showed off the channel’s new shows, and several of them return to the musical roots that initially made the network such a hit. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Forbes on podcasting; India and Internet radio; an oral history on CDs’ last days; call for “more innovators and fewer lawyers.” Continue Reading
Rhapsody International has named Mike Davis as its first CEO effective immediately. The company is the parent organization for the Rhapsody and Napster streaming services. Continue Reading
Billboard has named Spotify as its official streaming partner for 2016. With this new deal, Spotify will power playback on more than 75 charts from the music organization. It will also supply tunes for a New Music Fridays editorial and for three new Spotify-centric charts. Continue Reading
Everyone has their preferred ways to relax. And we love to see digital media channels sharing a sense of humor and pop culture savvy. Thus we report that, for the stoners of the world, iHeartRadio is honoring today’s date (4/20) by featuring WeedStream on its homepage. Continue Reading
Shazam announced a new feature focused on businesses looking to use the recognition app for marketing. Shazam for Brands adds more ability to create data-driven storytelling on top of the core Shazam functionality. It offers tools for data collection and analysis, branded content, and more scannable material for customers to engage with. Continue Reading
The cadre of apps for listening and playlisting across streaming services has got yet another member. Qus is an app that can pull tunes from YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Deezer in addition to locally stored tracks. This is becoming a more common approach to mobile listening, but few of the latest entries have shown anything that indicates they’ll stand the test of time. Continue Reading
Chinese conglomerate Alibaba unveiled a new music property today. Alibaba Planet is a tiered platform for building fan-artist relationships and for music creatives to connect with each other. China is subject to some complicated regulations when it comes to music streaming, so it will be interesting to see just how that component of Alibaba Planet unfolds. Continue Reading
Amazon announced new month-by-month options for how its users can access Prime membership perks and its streaming video features. The entire Prime service can still be bought as an annual subscription for $99, but now is also available for $10.99 a month. That alone is a marked shift in Amazon’s model, but it has also made the Prime Video streaming service available as a standalone for $8.99 a month. Continue Reading
Futuri Media publicly announced POST, a broadcaster tool for creating on-demand audio, a new product exclusively introduced by Futuri CEO Daniel Anstandig at RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas on Sunday. POST makes it easy to clip segments from linear radio and re-purpose them as on-demand audio. Continue Reading
Google Play Music has officially launched a section for podcasts. The service first teased the new feature back in October, but then went silent until an email leaked late last week. But the company has been busy in that time, signing on some of the big players from the podcast world. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Pandora CEO at Midem; some context on the vinyl resurgence; Spotify’s millennial listeners; Kanye and Tidal sued over “exclusivity.” Continue Reading