U.S. commercial radio raised $425,000 for Feeding America yesterday, in a rapidly organized effort called Radio Cares. Hundreds of stations and radio groups pitched in with on-air promotions. It was a virtuosic effort. What is podcasting doing, as a cohesive medium, in this national emergency. Maybe it’s time to develop a unifying trade organization. Continue Reading
ASCAP announced that it recorded record high distributions and revenues in 2019. The performing rights organization generated $1.274 billion in 2019 revenue, up from $1.227 billion the previous year. Distributions also surpassed $1 billion for the third consecutive year. Continue Reading
Voxnest has been monitoring the race between Apple and Spotify to be the top podcast listening platform. The company shared first-quarter data from its Voxnest Audience Network. It found that Spotify made some inroads into the U.S. market, grabbing the lead in a few states during the period. Continue Reading
Latin music is seeing faster growth in the U.S. than the overall market, with streaming responsible for almost all of the genre’s domestic revenue. According to the RIAA, Latin music revenue grew 28% in 2019 to reach $554 million. Continue Reading
Podcast network Dear Media announced that it has raised $8 million in Series A funding from Magnet Companies. The company will use these resources to expand its podcast slate and fund original intellectual properties. Continue Reading
Apple has reported its financial results for the three months ending March 28. The performance overall showed slowing growth, although many of its important metrics still trended upwards. Continue Reading
We learned from RadioToday that Jay Walkerden has left Australian radio group Nova, and has started a podcast production and consulting company call Podshape. The exit from nova was apparently not friendly, according to the write-up, but details are short. Anyway, Podshape is the new venture for the Brisbane executive, who ran the podcast division of Nova. Continue Reading
Tom Webster (SVP, Edison Research) and Joel Sucherman (VP, New Platform Partnerships, NPR) held forth in a Zoom webinar to present the Smart Audio Report 2020, a collaboration of the two companies. The report consisted of a wealth of metrics, including specialty survey questions relevant to Covid-19, and “qualitative research” — videos of users talking about how they use smart assistants. Click for details. Continue Reading
The Mechanical Licensing Collective announced several new hires for its leadership team. The organization was formed by the passage of the Music Modernization Act and is responsible for administering the new blacket compulsory mechanical license for digital music services. Continue Reading
In this week’s Q1 earnings call from parent company Sirius XM, we learned (and reported) that Pandora experienced a drop in monthly listeners to about 61-million, down from the year-ago Q1 report of 66-million. Sirius XM executives think they know exactly why. Continue Reading
Futuresource Consulting released a report with an outlook on how the coronavirus pandemic might impact music streaming. Given the uncertainty around how COVID-19 may continue to impact both individual listening habits and broader national economies, any sort of projections should be read with several grains of salt. But a surveys and forecasts can still help companies make their best guesses about where listening trends will go. Continue Reading
Anchor has been attracting users on its premise of easy, straightforward podcast creation. The platform’s latest update is an option for turning video files into audio shows. The system can work with several popular video chatting apps. Continue Reading