Interviews with, and contributions from, the most perceptive voices in the online audio industry.
Barely a day goes by without seeing some article about a songwriter whose song was played a million times on a digital music service like Pandora or Spotify, with the artist only receiving a relatively small amount of royalty revenue from that seemingly large number of plays. A number of issues are misunderstood — especially about big numbers. Continue Reading
Our Infinite Dial studies have been tracking usage of online radio since 1998, and we have asked about ‘monthly usage’ since 2000. In a recent meeting I made the comment that if one superimposes the graph showing growth of smartphone ownership over the monthly online radio usage one can see a strong correlation. Continue Reading
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released A Digital Audio Buyer’s Guide, a free, 29-page explanatory overview of the streaming audio advertising ecosystem. The guide promotes digital audio’s high-growth, mobile-friendly attributes to marketers. Continue Reading
Intellectual property attorney Angus MacDonald examines the 2014 royalty collections by SoundExchange, and Pandora’s earnings reports, to determine that Pandora accounts for more than half of all SoundExchange revenues distributed to artists and labels. What does the future look like as the Copyright Royalty Board prepares a ruling of webcaster royalty rates for 2016-2020? Continue Reading
James Cridland Weekly Links is a column by the U.K.’s radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: An example of powerful broadcast advertising, much podcast news, and an international array of links. Continue Reading
In The Infinite Dial 2015 Edison Research tested consumer awareness of 17 different streaming audio brands. Tidal wasn’t among them, but the re-launched service is in the news now. Is there room for a newcomer in the crowded music-service field? Continue Reading
Guest columnist Chris Price examines the hit-making power of curation. Continue Reading
James Cridland Weekly Links is a column by the U.K.’s radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: A new DAB radio multiplex in the U.K., and a boatload of hand-picked great reading about radio and digital radio. Continue Reading
Roger Lanctot is Associate Director of Strategy Analytics, and a thought leader in the connected-car space. In this guest article, he notes missing metrics for in-car radio listening. “It’s time for researchers to get behind the wheel and plumb the mysteries of in-vehicle listening.”
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A key metric from The Infinite Dial 2015 shows that in the midst of momentum for the podcast category, there is still much growth to come. Also — an entertaining video. Continue Reading
RAIN News founding editor Kurt Hanson traveled to Milan for Radiodays Europe 2015. This bulletin includes his final observations. Continue Reading
Guest columnist Larry Rosin, President of Edison Research, expands the details of podcast listening by age group, from The Infinite Dial 2015. Continue Reading