Progress continues with the Mechanical Licensing Collective, the organization formed by the Music Modernization Act to administer the new blanket licenses. The MLC has said it will need $37.25 million to build the structure and set its first-year operating budget at $29 million. Continue Reading
Amazon announced that it is introducing a high-definition streaming music option. More than 50 million songs will be available in high-definition, with lossless, CD-quality audio. The service will also offer millions of tracks in Ultra HD, which is even better quality than CD audio. Continue Reading
NPR has long been a leader in podcasting, and now the organization is forecasting breakthrough financial returns on the audio format. Deborah Cowan, chief financial officer at NPR, said that the network has projected that corporate sponsorship revenue from podcasts will reach $55 million in the 2020 fiscal year. Continue Reading
Triton Digital announced that it has hired Daryl Battaglia for the post of senior vice president of market development and strategy, audience research. Battaglia joins the company from Nielsen, where he held jobs such as heading strategy and product development for the Media Analytics unit. Continue Reading
Toyota announced that new Prius models will come with additional connected car technology. Apple CarPlay, Amazon’s Alexa voice AI, and the car manufacturer’s Safety Connect system will come standard beginning with the 2020 car makes. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s International Radio Trends is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: A new milestone on the horizon at NPR. Several sets of statistics on radio in the U.S. Much more. Continue Reading
Spotify has been making tweaks and adjustments to its family plan, and the most recent continues the company’s efforts to restrict how people approach the group subscription option. The new terms and conditions published in August state that everyone on a family plan must reside at the same address. Continue Reading
Amazon has launched a new, crowdsourced supplement designed to help improve its voice assistant. Alexa Answers lets users contribute their own responses to queries that stumped the voice AI. Continue Reading
iHeartMedia announced the launch of a new website that collects all of its sports programming. iHeartRadio Sports will contain more than 195 live broadcast and digital stations and more than 25,000 podcasts. Continue Reading
Spreaker announced that its Spreaker Studio program is the first podcasting app to offer full compatibility with Chrome OS. This operating system runs on Google’s Chromebook laptops. Continue Reading
Apple usually shares a lot of hardware updates in the fall, and it appears that the company’s smart speaker will be getting a few new features. The HomePod was not discussed at all during the Apple keynote event this week, but its product page was updated with news that the device would be getting radio streaming on September 30. Continue Reading
Pandora has followed up its Mac desktop app launch in the spring with a new Windows version of the software. Listeners for any of Pandora’s plans can download a dedicated app for its audio service. Continue Reading