A frightening audio commercial for the movie’s sequel wasn’t expected to play during the “Classical Lullabies” playlist on Spotify. At least, the mother who was soothing her young child didn’t expect it. Ad targeting gone awry? A poorly classified playlist? Or was it the sponsor’s fault? Continue Reading
Voice assistants have been a growing topic of interest for the audio industry, and businesses are still finding ways to further develop the technology. Last month, Spotify received a patent on a new way to make a voice assistant that can be responsive to human emotions. Continue Reading
RAIN published our annual Predictions feature in the first week of January. We challenged participants to predict a key metric in the RIAA 2019 report of streaming music revenue. Alexis van de Wyer and Steve Pratt were both right to a half percentage point. Continue Reading
Many business are trying to make a move into the world of podcasting infrastructure, and several have been successful in attracting financial support. The latest is Sounder, an end-to-end podcast management and monetization platform. Continue Reading
HiStudios is going through a rebranding. The business was initially spun out from podcast company Himalaya last August. Now it is separating itself as an independent entity and will be renamed as Notorious. The split from Himalaya is effective immediately and, according to the press release, will allow both businesses to pursue their own strategic priorities for growth. Continue Reading
7digital, a digital music B2B company, has borrowed £500,000 from an unnamed lender. The loan is intended for working capital purposes, according to the company, which is recovering from a challenging 2018 and 2019. Continue Reading
Audio tech company Veritone is announcing a change to its aiWARE product, expanding its podcast classification system to align with IAB’s category map. According to Veritone’s promotion, this change further automates podcast content tagging and metadata assignment. that, in turn, makes podcasts easier to sell to advertisers. Continue Reading
Podcast company Libsyn announced an integration with Headliner, a promotional tool that creates video clips to be shared on social media. Audio has often struggled to perform on social media, where visual content dominates and many videos are automatically muted. Continue Reading
Westwood One released its 2020 Audioscape, a roundup of listening and device-use trends from Q3 of Share of Ear — an ongoing subscription research project produced by Edison Research. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: This is the dawning of the age of the artist. A history of digital radio in Italy. The 2020 Ultimate Podcast Bracket. Continue Reading
On Monday the U.S. stock market underwent its biggest percentage drop since 2008, involving the biggest point decline ever. We looked at eight important audio stocks to see how they fared. They all dropped, but the range of damage might be surprising. Continue Reading
The Copyright Royalty Board’s 2018 ruling for mechanical royalties to be paid by streaming services has been on the books for awhile, but it will be returning to court this week. Four streaming services filed appeals against the ruling in March, and the U.S. Court of Appeals will begin hearing arguments from the legal counsel for Amazon and Spotify today. Continue Reading