Apple acquires Shazam

Posted on by Brad Hill

Over the weekend TechCrunch broke news from undisclosed sources in Apple that the tech giant was close to acquiring market-leading music-ID platform Shazam — Apple confirmed the acquisition this morning. The enormously popular and influential Shazam has historically taken the role of Switzerland, standing in the midst of Spotify, Napster, Apple Music and others, offering to funnel ID’d songs to the user’s preferred listening platform. That could change. Continue Reading →

Amazon makes global push with Music Unlimited and Echo launching in 28 countries

Posted on by Anna Washenko

Amazon Music Unlimited and the Amazon Echo have rolled out into 28 new countries. The on-demand streaming subscription service debuted in the United States in October 2016, and Amazon made voice controls and smart speaker access central components of using the music platform. It even offers tiered pricing for people who are part of its Prime program and who own an Echo device. Continue Reading →

Bridge Ratings’ 2017 trends: Streaming, podcasting, and smart speakers

Posted on by Anna Washenko

Bridge Ratings has published its recap of 2017, drawing several broad trends in the music and audio industry. The company’s wrap-up said that the number of streams in 2017 increased 40% over the total for 2016. It also offered insights on programming for on-demand streaming, such as using data about a playlist’s specific audience to encourage more frequent listening and when to ease up on a song that could be over-exposed to today’s highly connected listeners. Continue Reading →

Classical music streaming news roundup: Series A funding, an iOS app, and a new catalog

Posted on by Anna Washenko

In the past few years, as streaming services grew to hold larger shares of music industry revenue and consumer listening hours, the key drivers have been mainstream genres. Pop and hip-hop usually feature in the lists of top performers. This week, we’ve collected several developments focused on classical music in the streaming space. Continue Reading →

What makes a good ”audio logo”? (New research)

Posted on by Anna Washenko

Veritonic has released its 2017 Audio Logo Index, an assessment of how effective audio advertisements are and which brands in the U.S. and the UK created audio signatures that best connected with customers. The key traits highlighted in the study could be useful signposts for ad agencies looking to strengthen their in-house capabilities for audio as well as for publishers or hosts of audio content who want data to back their appeal as a source of ad money. Continue Reading →