Napster — one of the most loved, loathed, and lasting brands in the history of online music. The Napster brand is audaciously being used by Ryan Lester, a college student taking some time off for personal projects. Lester has put up Napster.FM, implicitly arguing that a brand’s trademark does not extend across top-level domains — dot-com and dot-fm, for example. Continue Reading
Tom Conrad, Chief Technology Officer and EVP of Product at Pandora, announced today via a blog post that he will transition out of his full-time position in three months. Conrad’s double role as technology/product head will be filled by two people going forward. Chris Martin, previously VP of Engineering, is promoted to CTO. Continue Reading
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) released its report of 2013 sales and revenue today. (PDF here.) The main bullet point is that streaming is the fastest-growing segment of the recorded-music industry, and its revenue contributes to keeping the industry stable. Streaming has contributed a continually escalating percentage of total revenue since 2007. Continue Reading
RAIN Summit West will occur on Sunday, April 6th in Las Vegas. One afternoon panel is “Moving the Needle on Streaming Audio Ad Revenues,” moderated by Rockie Thomas, VP of Business Development at AdsWizz. Thomas will lead a discussion among a lineup of executives from SoundHound, Pandora, Spotify, Targetspot, Triton Digital. Continue Reading
The ASCAP vs. Pandora rate-setting trial, brought before a federal judge to determine how much Pandora must pay music publishers and composers to play recordings of their music, has ended in a preservation of Pandora’s existing rate. While Pandora hoped to lower that rate by a small amount, ASCAP hoped to raise payments by up to 62% Continue Reading
The five most-read articles last week: iHeartRadio’s news bulletin; Amazon’s possible music service; Mixcloud’s ambitions; Neil Young’s very successful bad idea; RAIN Poll results. Continue Reading
The Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) today released a 2013 revenue report for broadcast radio. By a wide margin, digital revenue led other income segments in year-over-year comparisons. Overall revenues were flat in 2013, when examined through two lenses: full year-over-year, and Q4 2013 vs. Q4 2012. Digital is growing fast from a small percentage of total radio revenue — 5% in 2013. Continue Reading
Amazon is reportedly negotiating with music labels about an Amazon-branded music service. According to Recode’s sources, the talks are not flying along because Amazon is asking for more favorable licensing terms than those negotiated by music-only services. Continue Reading
In an interesting and opportunistic maneuver, U.S.-based music service Rdio has acquired teetering Indian streaming platform Dhingana. Dhingana will power Rdio’s India launch sometime this year. The Indian music business is estimated at $170-million, mostly comprised of Bollywood (or “filmi”) songs. Around the edges, Indipop, regional music, devotional songs, and infiltrations of Western pop are additional categories. Continue Reading
The General Manager of Rhapsody-owned Napster Europe caused some raised eyebrows, confused head-scratching, and probably an internal memo or two, when he was quoted in an Inquirer interview saying that streaming platforms will always be mainly discovery tools for buying CDs. The remark clearly didn’t play well, so Schliesche went back to The Inquirer to revise the record. Continue Reading
Currently, iTunes Radio is packed into the default Music app, the icon for which which cannot be removed from the iPhone/iPod/iPad desktop. The iTunes Radio brand is not spelled out anywhere in the system. As a review point of the service and its accessibility, we think iTunes Radio should exist as a separate identity in iOS. Continue Reading
In what could be described as the first crack in The Echo Nest’s music-powering empire, Rdio CEO Anthony Bay told CNBC that his music service would end its relationship with the music-data company. The Echo Nest was acquired by Spotify last week, and Bay doesn’t want his user metrics visible to a competitor. Continue Reading