RAIN Notes: Wednesday, March 31
News
TuneIn adds MLB to its Premium sports programming
TuneIn is notifying us that the Premium subscription level of the streaming audio app has struck a distribution deal with Major League Baseball (MLB) to carry radio broadcasts of all 2022 games. TuneIn serves 75-million active monthly users. The Premium subscription is offered at $9.99/month, and includes major sports, music, news, and 100,000 global stations with reduced ads.
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RAIN Notes: Tuesday, March 29
iHeartMedia joins with Collab Inc. to launch Curativity and new kids podcasts
iHeartMedia is partnering with digital talent network/studio to form a new network called Curativity. The alliance kicks off with three kid shows. Continue Reading
Podcast downloads +45% year-over-year (Podtrac)
In our latest intermittent check-ins to Podtrac’s weekly podcast download report, we see a 45% increase between March 22, 2021 and March 27, 2022. The Society & Culture category showed the strongest week-over-week growth at +5%. Science showed the weakest week-over-week growth at -7%. Click for graphics.
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Spotify’s “Loud&Clear” portal evangelizes value to musicians
Spotify has dropped an interactive graphic website which presents statistics promoting Spotify’s value (and the value of streaming music generally) to musicians at many levels. Up top, Spotify notes that it has paid over $30-billion in royalties to the music industry as a whole, including $7-billion last year. Following that is an interactive card deck, called Top 10 Takeaways,” which highlights selected payout metrics. And there is much more. Click for illustrations and a link. Continue Reading
Weekly and monthly podcast listening dip, showing return to work and school (The Infinite Dial)
In The Infinite Dial 2022, released today in a live-theater webinar at Podcast Movement Evolutions, podcast listening was shown to pull back from high levels during Covid lifestyle changes. The shift indicated a return to pre-Covid lifestyles of work and school, at least to some extent, among monthly and weekly podcast listeners. Click for details and graphics. Continue Reading
RAIN Notes: Tuesday, March 22
Jottings of Note
— New Phase (Kelli Hurley)
— Acquisitional (The Verge)
— Smartest (Tom Truitt)
In-car radio listening “at its low point” (Jacobs Media Techsurvey)
In a blog post written by Fred Jacobs, Jacobs Media reveals that in-car broadcast radio listening, as a percentage of time spent listening, is at its lowest point in a span of 2018 to 2022. This teaser result is from the upcoming annual Techsurvey presentation scheduled for release in April. Podcasting shows an interesting movement, too. Continue Reading
RAIN Notes: Monday, March 21
Jottings of Note
— Smart Annoyances (WaPo)
— Easy Intimacy (Entrepreneur)
— Kid Kaboom (Hollywood Reporter)
Serial to collect Governors Award at The Ambies
The Podcast Academy has announced milestone podcast Serial as the winner of the Governors Award at this year’s 2nd annual The Ambies podcast awards. The ceremony is March 22. The honor, which is chosen by The Podcast Academy Board of Governors, recognizes the impact that a podcast or individual has had on the industry. Continue Reading
Winamp to auction NFT of iconic original “skin” to start global nonprofit foundation for musicians
From SVP Dominick Milano we receive news that Targetspot-owned Winamp, the iconic desktop audio player which arguably started the MP3 revolution, will auction an original NFT of its first “skin” — the app’s appearance in 1997. Proceeds from this effort, and future auctions, will go into a new Winamp Foundation which will collect money to help musicians around the world. Continue Reading