Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Music festivals in the streaming era. A year in musical mergers. Reflecting on Spotify’s listing. Continue Reading
Music is often closely tied to big moments in current and cultural events, and the latest record-breaker at Spotify is an example of that. Mariah Carey is the new holder of the one-day streaming record after her “All I Want for Christmas Is You” surpassed 10.8 million streams this Christmas Eve. Continue Reading
Amazon shared another set of eye-popping statistics from the holiday shopping season. The retailer reported that 2018 was a record-breaking holiday, with the most items ordered worldwide. The new iteration of the Echo Dot smart speaker was one of the best-selling products for the company. Continue Reading
Webcast listening in September was 8% higher than the year-ago period, as Spotify widened its upward trend advantage compared to Pandora. This according to Triton Digital’s Top-20 Ranker, a monthly report based on Triton’s Webcast Metrics streaming measurement technology. Continue Reading
Podcasting has been having a banner year, and many new apps and services have emerged to cater to the growing audience. One of the latest is a project called Just Listen from Wenbin Fang, the creator of the minimal Listen Notes database. Just Listen offers an unusual take on podcast discovery. Continue Reading
Christmas is a day for opening presents, which means the day after Christmas is when the recipients get to try out their new toys. Lori Lewis, a social media executive with previous stints at Cumulus Media, Westwood One, and Jacobs Media, has monitored which free apps have topped the charts on December 26 for the past four years. Continue Reading
The passage of the Music Modernization Act in October was hailed as a watershed moment for the industry, a big step to bring the law in line with the latest trends in how and where music consumption happens. Work has now begun to enact one of the Act’s critical measures. Continue Reading
The Neil Young Archive first debuted about a year ago, offering his fans a chance to access his music catalog at a high audio quality. While the site was free for the beta period, the site is now formally launching as a subscription service and app. Continue Reading
Amazon is facing a fresh round of privacy concerns after an error shared a user’s voice recordings with a stranger. A German user of the Amazon Alexa voice assistant asked to hear an archive of his recordings, but the link he was sent also included 1,700 audio files from a different person. Continue Reading
Stitcher released a year in review report with some highlights from 2018. The infographic showed that 13,479 people listened all 365 days of the year. A dedicated 101 people listened to more than 12 hours a day of Stitcher programming. Continue Reading
Just how smart are smart speakers? Loup Ventures has released the results of its annual Smart Speaker IQ Test, and the report found that Google Assistant is currently the brainiest of the bunch. In a test of 800 questions, Google’s voice platform answered 88% correctly. Continue Reading
Voxnest has released an ambitiously titled State of the Podcast Universe Report, summarizing recent data. It is a meaty summary that includes key metrics from outside sources, and also reveals very interesting internal metrics. Continue Reading