Shazam, best known as a music-identification app, is reportedly closing a $20-million funding round with undisclosed investors. Perhaps the most important part of the news is a reported disclosed valuation of $500-million. Continue Reading
Music intelligence company The Echo Nest continues its global expansion in a partnership with Hikari-TV, part of NTT Plala. (NTT is Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation.) Hikari-TV is an in-home provider of broadband services including on-demand video and music. Continue Reading
Subscribers to digital editions of The Times (London) newspaper now get a Spotify subscription at no extra charge. Spotify normally costs U.K. users 120 British pounds per year. A digital subscription to The Times is priced at 312 British pounds per year. Continue Reading
The whole world is celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, considered the start of Beatlemania. Well, part of the world, anyway, and mostly people of a certain age. Continue Reading
Spotify announced a new programming tactic it calls a “radio show,” starring singer/songwriter Billy Bragg. A monthly production, the first episode will appear tomorrow, February 11. The program’s hook is a “talking playlist.” Continue Reading
Pandora announced a new open submission process for independent artists and small labels who wish to place music in Pandora’s streams. The breakthrough aspect for independent musicians is ease of submission. Continue Reading
The first edition Nielsen’s quarterly State of the Media: Audio Today 2014 report is out. Although the report’s title uses the general term “audio,” the study is only about radio’s reach and radio’s listener behavior. As such, it provides an uplift for the radio industry. Continue Reading
Streaming music to one’s TV might not be the most intuitive use-case scenario, but it’s getting more popular. One reason is that the television sometimes is attached to the home’s best sound system. Beats Music and Rdio have integrated with Chromecast to enable that. Continue Reading
Market-leading Internet radio service Pandora released its monthly audience metrics for January today, showing year-over-year growth in its key metrics. The month-over-month movement was flat or downward, after a sharp upward spike in the December report. Continue Reading
David Porter founded 8tracks in 2007 and launched it the next year (on 8/8/08) with a loan against his 401k. The business took its first institutional funding round in October, 2011. We talked to him about mood-activity music discovery, which his service originated. Continue Reading
Last year SoundExchange paid out $590-million to labels and performers, an all-time high. Over 10 years, it has distributed about $2-billion. 2013 was SoundExchange’s 10-year anniversary. SoundExchange collects royalties from Internet, satellite, and cable radio. Continue Reading
The popular European music service Deezer has reportedly hired Tyler Goldman as head of its San Francisco office. The speculation is that Goldman will act as CEO of Deezer’s U.S. operation, whenever that much-awaited expansion happens. Continue Reading