The rumor hasn’t been refuted yet, and the entire music-tech world is treating it a fact, soon to be manifested. Apple will (reportedly) acquire Beats Electronics, including Beats Music. RAIN solicited comments from thought leaders, and harvested some of the most provocative perspectives in other media outlets, to create a landscape of opinion and speculation. Continue Reading
In the course of Pandora’s three-year history as a public company, it has had pretty strong support from the stock analyst world. However, consistently during that period there’s been one major bear — Rich Greenfield, of the research firm BTIG. Greenfield has issued approximately 29 analyst reports on Pandora, every one of them negative. Kurt Hanson analyzes. Continue Reading
Listening to music and acquiring music are entwined. In 2014, collecting music has a new meaning, and increasingly occurs without the need of a traditional music product — physical or virtual. What collecting music means today. Continue Reading
Big data, the term used for collections of data that are so big that special processing is needed in order to use it, is a key component of customized music services. Big data processing is important on the advertising side as well. Jennifer Lane thinks about the possibilities that big data can offer to streaming audio. Continue Reading
Born in Bologna, Italy, Guglielmo Marconi would have been one-hundred-forty years old today. Widely recognized as the inventor of Radio, Marconi may have actually set out to perform a different task solving a different problem. A guest column by Patrick Reynolds, Chief Strategy Officer of Triton Digital. Continue Reading
Much has been said about the ‘connected dash’ in recent weeks: the concern that radio has plenty to lose from forthcoming internet-connected cars, that’ll offer internet radio, Spotify-like services, and plenty more. Guest columnist James Cridland says that if you’re a radio broadcaster, you should start worrying right now. Continue Reading
Addressing this issue should be a major concern for AM/FM broadcasters, since hugely-long spot breaks are cited regularly, at least anecdotally, as a reason consumer are spending less hours per week with broadcast radio and more hours per week with satellite and Internet radio each year. RAIN founder Kurt Hanson offers ideas. Continue Reading
Record Store Day might seem to be an anachronism to some, but the annual event (held this past Saturday) is fun, well-attended, good for the stores, and nice promotion for many musicians and bands. For me, it’s all about the memories. For many years I lived in Princeton, NJ, home of a famous independent music store. Continue Reading
Music publication Pitchfork has produced a dazzling feature called Station to Station: The Past, Present, and Future of Streaming Music. It is a worthwhile read for anyone in the field, or interested in the evolution of music listening — if you can figure out how to read it. Continue Reading
Bette Midler is the latest high-profile musician to launch a complaint about revenue from music streaming, a meme that we refer to as the Spotify Debate. Spotify and Pandora bear the lash of musicians’ anger more than most other services — and suffer the resulting confusion, too. Continue Reading
Last week we learned from the Radio Advertising Bureau’s 2013 Revenue Report that digital dollars continue to increase at a much faster rate than other revenue segments for radio broadcasters. One of the obvious reasons why the digital sector is growing quickly is that the streaming audience is growing in all the right ways. Continue Reading
M. Luke McDonell is a writer, artist, and photographer living in San Francisco. A veteran of South by Southwest, she is contributing airy contributions from the 2014 show. This SXSW report is from the first weekend of SXSW Interactive. Continue Reading