Technology, hardware, and gadgets. WiFi speakers, digital dashboards, and more.
Milwaukee 50,000-watt talk powerhouse WTMJ, flagship station of the Green Bay Packers (since 1929), Milwaukee Brewers, and Milwaukee Bucks, is covering high-school football and basketball via pureplay streaming on the Radionomy platform. Continue Reading
Home speaker company Sonos has raised $130 million in financing, according to TechCrunch. The recent influx brings its total funding to about $455 million. Sonos can sync with several music services, including Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, Deezer, Sirius XM, Radionomy, SoundCloud, and Google Music. Continue Reading
Beep, a streaming adaptor that turns nearly any speaker system into a WiFi streaming speaker, has reportedly raised $4-million. Beep also added Spotify to its short list of supported music services, joining Pandora. Continue Reading
T-Mobile announced the addition of several services to its Music Freedom plan, which lets listeners stream songs without counting the activity against their data plans. Google Play Music was the most-requested addition according to T-Mobile’s crowdsourcing efforts earlier this summer, and it is now included under the plan. Xbox Music and SoundCloud are the other better known names added to the list. Continue Reading
Prizm, a new entry in the WiFi speaker field, has successfully completed its Kickstarter fundraising. The device streams music from the cloud, pulling tracks from Deezer and Spotify premium accounts and from free SoundCloud accounts. The team is working on adding support for Rhapsody, Last.fm, and Rdio. Continue Reading
Imagine getting into a taxi and hearing your Spotify playlist, which you were just listening to, coming out of the car stereo. That is the vision, and starting this Friday the reality, of a partnership announced today by Uber and Spotify. The heart of the deal is about ownership vs. access, of both music and transportation. Continue Reading
Triton Digital announed today that it is DAAST-compliant, among the first technology providers to fully adopt the proposed audio advertising standard. DAAST was developed by the IAB and its Digital Audio Ad Serving Template Working Group. Triton’s announcement applies to its recently launched Tap advertising platform, released in September. DAAST is a technical ecosystem in which advertisers, publishers, agencies, and consumer playback devices are aligned to coherently deliver and track streaming audio advertising. Continue Reading
Anyone interested in buying, selling, or supplying technology for digital audio advertising should know about the upcoming standard specification for audio ads — DAAST (Digital Audio Ad Serving Template). Next Thursday, October 30, the IAB will host a webinar to introduce the proposed standard in a different format. Registration is free and open to everyone. Continue Reading
Pandora has launched a new online service that delivers audience analytics to musicians and their managers. Called Pandora AMP, the “Artist Marketing Program” includes data pulled from the many billions of hours people spend listening to the online radio platform. Any artists currently playing on Pandora can sign up for the free service at the AMP website. This initiative marks the first time pandora has turned its data firehose toward musicians. Continue Reading
The music industry entered a new automotive battleground. The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies filed a lawsuit against several car companies, including General Motors and Ford Motor Company, seeking damages for vehicles equipped with what it believes are digital audio recording devices. Ford has filed a motion to dismiss the case. The argument hinges on a key definition. Continue Reading
With wearables no longer just the purview of science fiction movies, more and more content companies are revamping their services for access on the new technology. The latest is iHeartRadio, which is now available on Android Wear devices. Continue Reading
The long-awaited dot-RADIO domain (e.g. BrandName.radio) is a step closer to becoming reality, but not without a new chapter in a controversy which started last October. Today, BRS Media, which administers the purchase of dot-FM and dot-AM domains, will announce it has filed a Reconsideration Request to ICANN against its preliminary choice for administrator — the European Broadcast Union (EBU). We spoke to BRS Media CEO George Bundy for his insights. Continue Reading