Technology, hardware, and gadgets. WiFi speakers, digital dashboards, and more.
Sonos has opened its first physical retail location in New York City’s tony Soho neighborhood. The store places a high value on creating listening environments to best showcase its speaker products. In addition to the usual shelves of merchandise, the store has seven listening rooms designed to look like real rooms in houses. Continue Reading
Boston public station WGBH has joined VuHaus, the video platform populated by a nationwwide network of public stations. WGBH joins a major-market roster of participants that includes KCRW (Los Angeles), WXPN (Philadelphia), KUTX (Austin), WFUUV (New York), and others. Continue Reading
Podcast company Blubrry and technology firm StreamGuys are today announcing a partnership which turns Blubrry podcasts into internet radio streams. The option, which is offered to all Blubrry-hosted podcasters, is called Podcast2Radio. If that name sounds familiar, there’s a reason for it. Continue Reading
Westwood One announced a partnership with cloud intelligence company Veritone to offer radio stations near-instant archiving of content. The system, which stores and analyzes station programming online, is marketed as enabling a host of benefits extending from advertiser reporting to podcasting. Continue Reading
Jacobs Media-owned jacapps, a mobile app developer with a concentration in radio, announced in a webinar yesterday that its apps have been made compatible with Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and Ford’s SmartDeviceLink system. The upgrade will be available to radio stations next month. Continue Reading
Pandora has signed a deal with ride-sharing company Uber. This partnership will see Pandora integrated into the driver version of the Uber app, so they can make stations and thumb songs while behind the wheel. The Pandora-enabled app will be available in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. Continue Reading
Doppler Labs introduced a new set of high-tech earbuds that combine sound filtering and wireless streaming. The Here One earbuds can stream music from a smartphone, either the local files or from streaming apps. They can even take phone calls. Continue Reading
iHeartMedia today announced the launch of a private programmatic marketplace for digital radio in the company’s iHeartRadio service. iHeart says this is the first programmatic platform of its kind in the U.S. The platform is powered by ad-tech company AdsWizz. Continue Reading
This year’s music news has been notable for debates and lawsuits about music licensing, rights ownership, and royalty payments. The underlying issue is a complex and inscrutable layering of music ownership. Because of the dense and dark music ownership tangle, digital services cannot always identify correct parties for payment when songs are streamed. An exceptionally broad coalition of institutions has announced an initiative to create a global solution. Continue Reading
WGMC-FM in Rochester, New York (Jazz90.1) announced a plan to launch an original pureplay station starting in August. The originally programmed stream will feature blues on weekdays and big band tracks on weekends. Jazz90.1 is owned by a school district in Greece, NY (near Rochester) and is publicly funded, drawing support from listeners and businesses. Continue Reading
Como Audio has launched a Kickstarter campaign for two home audio players. Solo and Duetto are the new creations from the company, which is led by founder Tom DeVesto, whose past resume includes Cambridge Soundworks and Tivoli Audio. Continue Reading
The National Association of Broadcasters’ (NAB’s) Pilot research division has complete a survey of FM capability in U.S. smartphones sold in 2015. While FM reception continues to advance in the U.S. smartphone footprint, it remains mostly absent, and one unfortunate fact is likely to keep it that way. Continue Reading