Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Yahoo! Live update; Kindle Unlimited and its implications for content subscriptions across media types; what do people really care about in connected cars? Continue Reading
In a video (click through to watch) of an interview at the Brainstorm Tech conference hosted by Fortune, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek covered a lot of ground, In particular, he downplayed the possibility of Spotify spinning out a much-rumored IPO, with an offhand criticism of life as a public company. Continue Reading
Record sales are a troubling metric for many artists in this increasingly digital world. One approach that’s gaining some traction among musicians is to release albums not just in physical formats or on music-purchasing sites, but as apps for mobile devices. Sir Paul McCartney is the latest to try his hand at the app approach. Continue Reading
TuneCore, a leading digital agency that helps musicians distribute their recorded work to digital outlets, announced that its second-quarter revenue distribution totaled over $33-million dollars, an 18% increase over the same period last year. RAIN spoke to Scott Ackerman, TuneCore CEO, to dig deeper into the growth trend, particularly on the music-streaming side. Continue Reading
After hearing sad news of Johnny Winter’s death, we used Michael Robertson’s Radio Search Engine, and the artist-search feature in RadioTuna, to find poureplay stations pivoting quickly on the news with memorial programming. We found Rock Radio 1 placing Johnny Winter blocks into its stream of metal and blues-rock, surrounded by tribute songs by other bands. Continue Reading
Pandora announced that it now has 2 million registered listeners in Australia and New Zealand. The streaming radio service launched there in December 2012, its first non-U.S. rollout. To celebrate the milestone, Pandora created an infographic with some facts and figures about its presence in the region. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: In a recent news post, Spotify asked Jacob Jolij, a cognitive psychology and neuroscience professor at the University of Groningen, to explain how music triggers particular emotional responses in listeners. Continue Reading
Google announced that its Google Play Music All Access service is rolling out to six more countries. The company’s major push is in the South and Latin American markets, with the streaming and cloud storage service entering Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Peru. Continue Reading
The existing partnership between Rdio and Shazam took a big leap forward today. Going forward, the music-identification tool will allow Rdio members to stream whole songs from within the Shazam app. The updated Shazam app hit iOS on Monday, with a rollout expected for Android in the next few days. Continue Reading
Jazz lovers can be hardcore fans, with specialty interests in historical eras, legendary performers, and certain instruments. The genre lends itself to more specialized coverage than what is normally found in the universal music services. For the lean-back jazz aficionado, two services — JazzRadio and AccuJazz — provide seemingly endless great listening tailored to mood and sub-genre. Continue Reading
Garth Brooks is the best-selling solo artist of all time. He has been content to sit out the digital music disruption, which has mainly occurred during a 13-year retirement. Tomorrow, though, the official Garth Brooks site will start selling downloads of Brooks’ back catalog. A new album will drop in November, and the download version will likewise be sold exclusively on the site. Continue Reading
Bop.fm, a streaming startup founded seven months ago in the Y Combinator seed-funding group, has obtained a $2-million funding round from Charles River Ventures. Bop enables music sharing on a platform that hooks into popular streaming services. In the RAIN review, we found a crucial feature glitch, but an overall terrific experience that emulates an interactive music service, drawing on external libraries. As such, Bop.fm serves as a remote control for Spotify, Beats Music, and Rdio, and makes it easier to share music. Continue Reading