RAIN Notes: Tuesday, July 30
— Shady Collaboration (Acast)
— Stepping Up (The Podglomerate
— Back To Roots (John Goforth)
— Sight Is Unnecessary (John Fix / Westwood One Blog)
UMG stock remains trampled after streaming revenue dip
Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s largest record company, suffered an off-the-cliff stock dip last Thursday following the company’s earnings call. The hinge point? unexpectedly low streaming revenue. The question was: Who set the expectation? Continue Reading
Lower Street acquires Pacific Content
UK-based podcast production company Lower Street has acquired branded podcast creator Pacific Content. Lower Street founder Harry Morton explains why. Steve Pratt, Pacific Content founder, raves about Morton and Lower Street. Continue Reading
Acast celebrates decennial with 24% sales growth, over1B listens, net sales growth in Q2
Acast, founded in 2014, released its Q2 earnings with a 10-year celebrative spirit. Key bragging points focused on net sales, gross margin, EBITDA, number of listens, and average revenue per listen. Click for muc more detail. Continue Reading
Black Podcast Listeners: Business owners, monthly listeners, and more. (Signal Hill / Triton Digital)
Signal Hill Insights and Triton Digital have released a study called The Listening and Consumer Habits of the Black Podcast Audience. (It is HERE.) “Black Americans are a vital force within the American podcast audience.” –Jeff Vidler, President/Founder, Signal… Continue Reading
In wake of earnings, Spotify upgrades Ads Manager self-serve platform
A new look; better targeting; new ad formats. Those are the chief attributes of Spotify’s relaunch of its self-serve audio advertising platform. Oh — and a new name. BEFORE: Spotify Ad Studio. NOW: Spotify Ads Manager. (See RAIN’s coverage of… Continue Reading
Audioboom’s robust earnings: “maximizing the value it extracts from downloads”
UK-based global podcast company Audioboom released first-half earnings. The key performance indicators are unanimously sunny. Click for financial details and detailed comments from CEO Stuart Last. Continue Reading
Spotify Q2 earnings: A full quiver of upward-pointing arrows
“I said that while many believe that Spotify has a great product, we needed to prove that we could also be a great business. I think we’re really starting to show this now.” (Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify) That’s from Spotify’s Q2 earnings release. Click for numbers and charts.
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MiDIA Research launches “The Frequency Factor,” tracking intraday music app use
“Daily just isn’t enough,” claims Mark Mulligan, Managing Director and Analyst at MIDiA Research and RAIN guest columnist. He is referring to studies which measure usage and audience size. His solution? Intraday usage tracking, That view yields a surprising ranker. Click for graphs and explanations. Continue Reading
SoundExchange sues AccuRadio over royalties; AccuRadio publicly refutes lawsuit characterization
SoundExchange, the U.S. government-designated royalty collection and distribution agency for streaming music royalties, has sued AccuRadio, the Chicago-based streaming music platform. AccuRadio disputes the claims against it. Click for our coverage, plus both statements in full. Continue Reading
The power of female sports fans (Edison Research)
Most American women are sports fans to some degree — that’s from a study by Edison Research, with SiriusXM and Group M. Metrics abound to lock in that fact. But ultimately this research is about advertising, and it supplies key linkages connecting female fandom with purchasing power and tendency. Click for lots of detail and graphs. Continue Reading
NPR tops Triton June Podcast Ranker in two ranked categories
Triton Digital released its monthly US Podcast Ranker for June 2024, representing measurement from June 3 through June 30. (Triton rankers use 28-day months.) Triton’s ranker is actually two rankers: One for podcast shows, and one for podcast sales networks. We examine both.
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