ROK Mobile announced new developments in its available phone plans for music fans. The company is offering a bundle with unlimited talk, text, data, and streaming music for $49.99 a month. The streaming music component is called simply ROK Music and it has a library of 20 million songs. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. The ongoing discussions of Apple Music’s place in the industry have pulled out a range of opinions. We select pieces from MediaPost’s London editor, a Bridge Ratings survey, and Jeffrey C. Smith writing in Re/Code. Continue Reading
iHeartMedia and Unified have jointly announced a long-term partnership to develop audience-targeting datasets that can be applied across iHeart’s sprawling radio, streaming, mobile, and event portfolios. The deal includes an unspcified investment by iHeart in Unified. Continue Reading
In a tradition of featuring thought leaders in the online audio industry, RAIN today announced that Jake Shapiro, Chief Executive of public radio marketplace PRX, will present the keynote speech at RAIN Summit Atlanta, September 29. Continue Reading
Line Music has officially launched in Japan. It will offer two price tiers, the first costing 500 yen (about $4) a month for 20 hours of streaming. The second tier costs 1,000 yen (about $8) for unlimited listening on the platform. The streaming service is owned by Japan-based messaging company Line, and it also has involvement from Universal Music Japan. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: IAB research in mobile video; spotify offers an exclusive track; a rumor about Apple Music pricing in India. Continue Reading
The Download on Podcasts is a weekly feature sponsored by PodcastOne.
It seems like everyone is getting into podcasting — creators, networks, measurement companies, ad-tech companies, and now the transcription firm GMR Transcription, which announced the launch of an audio-to-text service. Does it make sense? We looked at two podcasts using the service.
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Czech Republic launches large T-DAB+ trial; Apple Music will be below standard audio quality; a rough outlook for indie Internet radio. Continue Reading
Spotify announced today that it has more than 20 million subscribers and 75 million active users on its streaming platform. The company started off 2015 with the announcement 60 million active users and 15 million paying subscribers, meaning Spotify grew quickly to hit this milestone. Spotify also closed a round of funding today valued at $526 million. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Sonos CEO on streaming’s impact and NPR listeners get an F on their audio quality test. Continue Reading
After a long build-up and a vast amount of speculation, Apple has finally announced Apple Music, its overhauled music offerings. Cook dubbed the new service “the next chapter in music,” and presented it as a single resource for listeners’ various musical needs. Most of the features and news shared by Tim Cook and his colleagues fell in line with the previously reported rumors on what it would look like. However, the team did clarify two of the key questions that had circled around Apple Music’s launch: a date and a price point. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio announced that it is making further inroads into living room listening with the launch of an app on TiVo. The app is available on the TiVo Roamio, TiVo Mini and the line of TiVo Premiere devices following the latest software update on that hardware. Continue Reading