Apple Music is launching the new year by making one of its earliest relationships more official. Ebro Darden is now the service’s global editorial head of hip-hop and R&B. Darden is a radio host with a weekday morning show on New York’s Hot 97 station, and he’s been a host on Apple Music’s Beats 1 station since the streaming service’s debut. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: RAD and the value of podcast listener data. Get an Apple Music year-in-review with this app. Continue Reading
RAIN’s most important 2018 coverage of research and metrics in digital audio. Continue Reading
The online audio industry was eventful in 2018, especially on the consolidation front. Here are the top M&A events: Continue Reading
Podcasts had a banner year, accumulating ever-growing audiences, ad revenues, and impact on popular culture. That also means podcasts are now subject to the annual practice of the “best of” list. Publications large and small are posting their lists of the top shows of 2018. Here, in one convenient location, are as many of those year-end round-ups as we could find. Continue Reading
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