Pandora has entered a partnership with fitness wearable company Fitbit to be the exclusive streaming music provider for the new Fitbit Ionic. Through this arrangement, subscribers to Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium tiers can sync workout stations or their top created stations directly to a Fitbit Ionic without needing their phones. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s Future of Radio is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: James has updates from the wide world of audio, including news from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Hong Kong. Continue Reading
Southern Cross Austereo, one of the largest radio and media groups in Australia, has signalled that it might raise its podcast advertising rates a bove its radio ad rates. The message came from CEO Grant Blackley, along with a financial release for fiscal 2017 that showed a 41% profit increase on 7.5% revenue gain. Continue Reading
At Podcast Movement last week, a panel of thought-leaders well known to RAIN readers and Summit attendees made a series of predictions to answer questions put by moderator Bryan Moffet of National Public Media. Sarah van Mosel (Market Enginuity), John Rosso (Triton Digital), Rob McCracken (Scripps) and Rob Walch (Libsyn) were in hot seats of a panel put on by Jacobs Media in a conference track marketed to radio professionals. Continue Reading
Global label agency Merlin has announced reaching a milepost of $1-billion dollars or rights payments distributed to member labels. Merlin licenses on behalf of 20,000+ indie labels in 53 countries. Continue Reading
Call it rumor or call it leak — Tesla’s supposed new streaming service, which has been in the chatter mill since late last week, probably falls between hearsay and revelation. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted in response to the rumor/leak. Continue Reading
Sprint is offering its customers free tickets to Jay-Z’s 4:44 tour when they sign up for a trial membership to the Tidal streaming service. This deal marks a further tightening the bonds between the music platform and the mobile telecom following Sprint’s acquisition of a 33% stake in Tidal at the start of the year. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Streaming pushes indies to the majors; curators vs creators; wireless audio survey results. Continue Reading
TagStation has released a new Dial Report, a collection of first-party radio station advertising data and smartphone user data. The platform measures more than 250 demographic, behavioral and listening data points in near real-time, allowing segmentation of the FM radio audience for precise audience targeting by advertisers. Continue Reading
Dash Radio has launched a live pop-up station in collaboration with BIG3, a 3-on-3 professional basketball league founded by rap icon Ice Cube. The BIG3 Radio channel will broadcast live for the final week of the league leading into its final game in Las Vegas. Continue Reading
Spotify has secured a licensing deal with Warner Music Group, meaning the streaming service now has agreements with all three major labels. The Warner deal is one of the final pieces Spotify needs to progress with any means of going public. Continue Reading
With podcasts and audiobooks continuing to grow in popularity, it makes sense that other forms of audio narration have been taking off too. The latest we’ve found is a startup called Audm, which delivers audio versions of select long-form journalism. Continue Reading