Viral Audio
Why is audio less viral than video? Audio has to work harder to be good. But when it is, it’s almost better. What are the elements that make great audio that people will want to share online? Continue Reading
Opinion & Features
PREVIEW: Beats Music
It’s official: Beats Music will open for subscription on January 21. It is clear from initial marketing, screenshots, and the long announcement from CEO Ian Rogers that Beats will focus on personalization and hand-crafted listening stations. If that doesn’t work, Beats has two more cards in its pocket. Click for the RAIN Preview. Continue Reading
Pandora is a $6.5B company, and nobody is talking about iTunes Radio, including Apple
Pandora is more than holding on to its 14% stock ascension yesterday, it has added another five percent as of this writing. Meanwhile, the silence around iTunes Radio resembles, well, dead air. How Pandora is trying to replace radio, and dominate Internet radio. Continue Reading
Streaming Services Put Focus On Advertising Innovations at CES
It’s press release week – err, I mean CES week – in our industry this week, a time when lots of folks gather in Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, and announce innovative products and projects. Two announcements in particular caught my attention yesterday. Continue Reading
2014 Predictions
Happy New Year! One easy prediction is this: 2014 will be an eventful year for all stakeholders in broadcast and Internet radio. RAIN is pleased to present predictions from thought-leading guest futurists. Continue Reading
Storyline 2013: Nielsen, Arbitron, and the ratings jigsaw puzzle
When Nielsen acquired Arbitron in September, visions of unification sprang into the minds of observers. Among Internet brands, Pandora arguably has the most to gain by holistic audience measurement. But as lean-back listening is more emphasized in Spotify, Rhapsody, and iTunes, many stakeholders want change in 2014. Continue Reading
Storyline 2013: Royalty Rumblings
2013 was the year in which music royalties were lifted from the realm of legal arcana, and placed in public consciousness. Along with that, the related issue of musicians’ livelihood was insistently inserted into the online conversation. A U.S. lawmaker introduced a new royalty regulation bill. Radio and label groups cut new deals. And Pandora shifted focus. Continue Reading
Storyline 2013: Audience targeting
In audio, advertisers are relatively blind. Before this year, ad buyers and sellers relied on registration data to gain a blunt demographic knowledge of users. 2013 might be remembered as the year in which understanding and targeting the audio-listening audience gained some degree of maturity. Two nearly coincidental breakthroughs signaled a possible evolutionary leap for advertisers. Continue Reading
Storyline 2013: iTunes Radio enters the fray
Without question the biggest and most anticipated product launch of the year in streaming audio, iTunes Radio was late to the party. But for that reason among others, its appearance signified a few important pivot points. A sober observation of iTunes Radio influence might conclude that the product has been less tide-turning than expected. Continue Reading
R.I.P., Mr. Lujack
In a world spanning almost precisely the glory days of AM Top 40 radio, where DJs were fast-paced, frenetic, and fun, Mr. Lujack (as he told us repeatedly that he preferred to be called) stood out as the antithesis of almost everyone else on the air. Listen to an air check in the article. Continue Reading
Audio ad-blocking is not an enhancement
Several Chrome browser extensions tune out Pandora audio ads. One of the pitfalls of being the streaming music platform of choice is that the service becomes a target for developers with the know-how to “improve upon it.” Ad-blocking is real, and is a growing problem. Continue Reading
The new streamripping: Shazam and SoundHound
Streamripping: a once-popular (and still practiced) way of pulling songs out of an Internet radio stream and saving them as MP3 files. Shazam and SoundHound bring free-or-cheap music collecting to the user’s encounter with music anywhere, including radio. Life is a stream, and Shazam rips it. Continue Reading