Sometimes in this life, you just need to get the party started. If there’s nary a DJ in sight to drop the beats for you, then try Abducted 1 Radio. This pureplay station is focused on popular dance tunes and remixes of the top 40 charts. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Google rolls out Songza feature in UK; British musicians might leave Bandcamp for tax reasons; Amazon’s holiday music winners. Continue Reading
Studies, surveys, and metrics abounded in 2014. RAIN News readers demonstrated acute interest in research which attempted to tease out trends in the fast-changing field of streaming audio. Click through for a rundown. Continue Reading
Deezer has inked a partnership with Cable & Wireless Communications, a telecom in Latin America and the Carribean. According to the CWC press release, music is the second most popular feature for the region’s mobile users. The telecom will be offering the Deezer Premium+ standalone service. Continue Reading
Sony experienced a debilitating hack on its confidential information earlier this month, with hackers publishing reams of email correspondence between the company’s leaders online for public viewing. Some of these emails revealed that Sony Corp. was considering selling off the music publishing arm because of concerns over its growth prospects. Thanks to a 2012 acquisition, the music publishing arm includes Sony/ATV Music Publishing and EMI Music Publishing. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Rdio CEO looks to 2015; critiquing Serial’s crime reporting; Continue Reading
Music recognition and discovery app SoundHound is adding its voice to the year-end roundups. It named Pitbull as the top artist of the year. Not only did he have several popular tracks under his own name, including the official song of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, but he was also involved in several collaborations that boosted his ranking. Continue Reading
Are lyrics the new hip feature for music services? Hot on the heels of Deezer announcing the addition of Lyrics to its streaming service, Google is now displaying the words to certain songs in its search results. For the tracks getting the lyric treatment, a large number of the lines will appear at the top of the hits with a link to the full lyrics on Google Play. Continue Reading
In a leaked internal memo published by Billboard, CEO and Chairman of Universal Music Group, Lucian Grainge, promised a continued commitment to artist development, and pledged to “re-design business models” as necessary. The memo comes at a time when major labels are engaged in publicized contract renewal discussions with Spotify. Continue Reading
The best-of lists continued today with an installment from Adweek. The magazine polled its readers on the top apps of the year for a range of industries, and iHeartRadio was chosen as the Hottest Music App of 2014. iHeart secured 44% of the votes to top the list. Continue Reading
When Taylor Swift and her label chose to remove the pop singer’s latest album and back catalog from Spotify, they unintentionally sparked the emergence of some fascinating data about online music listening habits. First came Nielsen’s discovery that Swift’s YouTube streaming counts ballooned from the moment her audio streams dropped. Second, we now have data showing that she added the most subscribers on the video network during November. Continue Reading
Ready for an antidote to the ordinary? The extraordinary All-Transistor Radio, a project of Magic Transistor, is the answer. More eccentric than college radio, All-Transistor Radio is programmed by a disparate affiliation of music collectors around the world. Continue Reading