If the holiday rush is starting to jangle your nerves, turn on Calm Stream, a Russian downtempo electronica station. Even the site is soothing, with its snow-white background and minimal, no-hassle, in-line music player. Continue Reading
Yahoo acquired concert-streaming platform Evntlive, which immediately shut down its ongoing operation. The Evntlive site carries an announcement of the takeover. No world on how much Yahoo spent. Evntlive was seed-funded at $2.3-million. In a takeover/shutdown of this sort, it… Continue Reading
Spotify will announce free mobile access to its listening platform, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources. If true (we think it is), the announcement will probably be part of a Spotify media event in New York on Wednesday of next week. Continue Reading
The “Spotify Debate” has been raised to a new level. It features the same debate points, but now presented as dueling websites. Until now, the war of words and philosophies was waged in sniping blog posts and interview quotes among… Continue Reading
Pandora CFO Mike Herring addressed the Credit Suisse 2013 Technology Conference this week. The format was a moderated Q&A session. We pulled out three subjects within which Herring’s responses were of particular interest: ratings measurement, how Pandora sells ads, and… Continue Reading
The Save Winamp alliance and Change.org are plugging away at AOL, which announced the sunsetting of Winamp and ShoutCast as ongoing products, as of December 20. (See RAIN coverage here.) Yesterday in RAIN, Jennifer Lane commented that the Winamp closure… Continue Reading
In what is widely interpreted a patent trolling, some radio broadcasters using HD digital transmission technology (HD Radio) alongside their analog signals are being sued by Delaware Radio Technologies and Wyncomm LLC for patent infringement. The spate of lawsuits has… Continue Reading
After months of leaks, the outlook for Beats Music is suddenly more specific and official. The service will debut in January, as announced by CEO Ian Rogers in his blog. “We’re nearly ready for liftoff. Thanks to your diligent testing… Continue Reading
But probably not for long. Keep in mind that everything written about YouTube’s entry into the subscription-music market is rumor, based on undisclosed sources. The latest twist: AllThingsD reports the rumored service will not meet its rumored launch timeframe (end… Continue Reading
Pandora released its three-point Audience Metrics report for November this morning. The statistics reveal month-over-month growth in each category. The most scrutinized part of Pandora’s monthly measurement drumbeat is the Active Listeners statistic. That number has received especially obsessive attention… Continue Reading
Two weeks after restructuring its costs via workforce downsizing (in other words, layoffs), Rdio has named a new CEO. Anthony Bay, former head of digital video at Amazon, replaces outgoing CEO Drew Larner, who becomes vice-chair of Rdio’s board. Larner… Continue Reading
Spotify might not have a big-data operation like Wal-Mart or Target. But 24-million users listened to 4.5-billion hours of music in 2013, and have created one-billion playlists on the platform. So there’s a good flow of metrics. Spotify, which has… Continue Reading