Columbia House, the company of 1980s mail-order music and movie fame, is no more. Parent company Filmed Entertainment filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this week and is looking to sell off the parts of its business still in operation. Continue Reading
Korean consumer electronics manufacturer LG has announced a new online music service that will operate exclusively on the company’s premium smartphones. Contrary to some reports, the announcement makes no mention of streaming, and instead describes a hi-fidelity music download store. It might be good strategy. Continue Reading
The hi-fi streaming club has another member. Aud.io bills itself as the world’s first high-fidelity Internet radio service. It offers ad-free listening to stations grouped by genre for $7.99 a month. The service uses a Pandora-like system of personalization based on likes and skips. But unlike the online radio standard, there’s no way to add other seeds or artist preferences or new stations. Here’s what I thought. Continue Reading
The Download on Podcasts is a weekly feature sponsored by PodcastOne.
The IAB announced a podcast “upfront” where several content and ad-repping compnies will present their shows to advertisers and agencies. Another mile-marker in an evolving industry of on-demand audio.
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SFX Entertainment reported revenue of $121.1 million in the second quarter, up 48.3% from the year-ago period. However, the parent company for online EDM specialty platform Beatport also posted an increase in net losses, up 36.2% to $48 million for the quarter. Continue Reading
Juniper Research released new data examining the outlook for ad-supported streaming revenue in subscription services. the report does not include non-interactive services like Pandora, which by itself exceeded $1-billion in total revenue over the past 12 months. Continue Reading
Slate Group-owned Panoply, a podcast network launched in February, has acquired Audiometric, a podcast publishing platform that includes ad insertion and analytics. The deal positions Panoply for expansion and more effective management of its portfolio of shows. We spoke to Andy Bowers at Panoply. Continue Reading
Deezer has made deeper inroads into the Brazilian market thanks to a deal with UOL, an ISP and Internet portal based in that country. Under this partnership, the two companies will launch UOL Musica Deezer, an on-demand music platform intended to replace Radio UOL. Continue Reading
The team behind This Is My Jam announced yesterday that the service would cease operating in its current state. The leaders said that past jams would be put into a read-only archive mode in September, meaning they can still be listened to but not added to. Members will also have several options for preserving and exporting their song choice lists, according to the announcement. Continue Reading
Chris Harrison has left his position as senior lawyer and vice president of business affairs at Pandora. He was a key player in several of Pandora’s recent moves, including its purchase of a terrestrial radio station. He also served as an expert witness in this spring’s consent decree hearings and additional proceedings on music royalties in pre-1972 copyright cases. Continue Reading
According to a new report from Digital Music News, Spotify may be reconsidering its free tier approach. Sources have allegedly told the site that Spotify may begin adopting a windowed path, making some music releases only available to paid listeners or only opening it up to free listeners for a short amount of time. The company is reportedly considering several different options for what form that gated material might take. Sources told DMN that multiple of those options could see a rollout in early 2016. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. TODAY: Does Beats 1 steal radio’s last advantage? Is Spotify a hitmaker? And U2 went on podcasting to break news. Continue Reading