Rhapsody International announced that it has hired Angel Gambino as its new chief commercial officer. In this role, she will be responsible for leading the business development, marketing, product, and partner management teams for Rhapsody in North America, Europe, and Latin America. Continue Reading
Apple hosted its quarterly earnings call yesterday. The tech giant reported more massive numbers in its fiscal first quarter, although a few segments did post declines. Quarterly revenue dipped 5% on-year, but still reached a whopping $84.3 billion. Continue Reading
Pandora’s shareholders have approved a big change to leadership, a move that will see new owners Sirius XM exerting much more control over the audio company. The January 29 meeting saw stockholders approve the all-stock acquisition of Pandora by Sirius XM. When the buyout closes, several high-ranking officials will leave Pandora, including CEO Roger Lynch. Continue Reading
Panoply announced that its Megaphone podcast platform has been integrated with Google Campaign Manager. The Google tool helps advertisers and agencies to manage digital campaigns for websites and mobile through ad serving, targeting, verification, and reporting features. Continue Reading
A German court has issued a ruling against a stream-ripping site. ZeeZee sought out user-requested tracks in online radio streams and then made copies of those songs available for download. Universal Music Group brought a lawsuit against ZeeZee in 2014 and successfully won an injunction against the site from Regional Court of Hamburg. The same decision was reached by the Appeal Court of Hamburg following an appeal from ZeeZee earlier this month. Continue Reading
BBC Sounds is the latest effort by the BBC to reach a broader and younger audience in the digital market. However, the mobile app has been raising eyebrows and questions among users since its launch. A recent dust-up around one of its podcasts being announced as exclusive to BBC Sounds has put the broadcaster on the defensive. Continue Reading
SoundCloud’s 2017 financial results included global revenue of €90.7 million ($102 million), up 80% from its 2016 total of €50.3 million. Subscription revenue nearly doubled to €72.6 million. Continue Reading
Amper Music, a company specializing in AI music creation, announced several developments yesterday. Its latest service is Amper Score, an end-to-end platform for music composition by artificial intelligence. Amper also announced that its API can be integrated into the tools and platforms of third-party companies. Continue Reading
SACEM, the French songwriter and composer collection society, announced that it is restructuring. The group is consolidating its licensing, international, and operations divisions into a single department. Continue Reading
Targetspot has announced a new sales director for the company’s Toronto office, which was opened last year as part of an international expansion. Mark Kates, who has held executive sales positions in several organizations since 2004, will lead Targetspot’s Canadian digital audio ad sales initiatives. Continue Reading
Listen Notes creator Wenbin Fang is back in action. The podcast platform programmer is building a name for himself with bare-bones platforms for podcast listening and discovery. The latest one is Listen Explorer. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s International Radio Trends is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: James recaps an action-packed week in the UK audio industry. Continue Reading