David Byrne has taken on more responsibility in lobbying for change in the music world after joining the board of SoundExchange. On Sunday, the former Talking Head penned an op-ed in The New York Times about the music industry’s finances, recommending greater transparency as a path to more success for all parties. Continue Reading
Beatport recently updated its terms to allow anyone to create an account and upload original tracks. These songs can be monetized on Beatport’s platform, and the owner will receive between 5% and 10% of the total amount generated by a track. The details of the per-stream royalty calculations are laid out for all to see in the terms of service. Continue Reading
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The weekly update of the streaming audio industry, from RAIN News. THIS WEEK: Pandora’s request denied; iTunes podcast anniversary, Sirius XM earnings; UK streaming growth; FM chips in phones. Continue Reading
Mixcloud announced updates to its mobile apps this week. The updates include landscape mode, a play queue to line up shows in advance, and automatically playing suggested content when the listener runs out of shows. The company also recently added tools for listeners to build their own stations. Continue Reading
The Syndicat National de l’édition Phonographique, better known as SNEP, released data on the first half of 2015 in France’s music industry. The nation saw 7.5 billion streams in those first six months, up 36% from the number of streams in the year-ago period. That equates to an average of 288 million songs listened to on streaming services each week. Continue Reading
SoundCloud announced the addition of a new executive to its leadership team. DeJuan Wilson has joined the streaming platform as the new vice president of global marketing and brand. In this role, Wilson will be responsible for working on SoundCloud’s brand story, developing its global marketing function, and communicating its value proposition for listeners and creators. Prior to joining SoundCloud, Wilson served as senior vice president of brand strategy and creative marketing for Viacom’s MTV2, MTVU, and Logo networks. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio is going social with its latest partnership. The online audio company has signed on with social media app Snapchat to be one of its featured Discover brands. According to Snapchat, it brought on iHeartRadio and BuzzFeed in an effort to provide more content variety to its users. Continue Reading
The IFPI has thrown its hat into the ring to discuss streaming royalties paid to artists. The group’s CEO Frances Moore penned a blog post about this delicate subject based on IFPI’s own research into the music industry’s financial situation. “The issue is not that artists are getting lower royalty payments from digital services – they are not – but that the overall recorded music market has shrunk, which means smaller revenues for all involved,” she wrote. Continue Reading
The Download on Podcasts is a weekly feature sponsored by PodcastOne.
Podcasting goes back to 2003, with its technology underpinnings stretching back even further. But for iTunes, which added shows in 2005, and therefore for most of the podcasting listenership, the category is 10 years old this summer.
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TuneCore released data on its Q2 payments. Artists received more than $35 million through the distribution and publishing administration service during the period. The total marks a 6% increase from payments in the second quarter of 2014, but a slight decline from the $36 million paid out in the first quarter of this year. Continue Reading
In this week’s earning call (see RAIN News coverage here), Sirius XM CEO James Meyer and CFO David Frear answered investor questions about connected cars, online streaming, and the recently settled pre-1972 lawsuits. Continue Reading
Even a cursory glance at the music industry headlines and market research will show that mobile is the wave of the future. We communicate, we entertain ourselves, everything happens on smartphones. In response, we’ve been seeing a surge of startups and programmers exploring just what the mobile music space might look like. This morning I explored an entry into the field of mobile apps for social music. This one is called Cymbal. Continue Reading