“2016 was a very significant year for Pandora, with progress on every important front. We enter 2017 with a clear set of strategic priorities and a solid plan to execute against them.” That was Pandora CEO Tim Westergren starting his company’s Q4 earnings call yesterday. Always optimistic, he laid out 2017 goals at a pivot point for the company he founded. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Stevie Wonder speaks out for radio fairness. Spotify doubling down on artist relations. Continue Reading
PodcastOne and Edison Research have shared the results from a series of brand lift studies, which examined the the impact of podcast ads for national consumer and service brands. The data combined three separate studies into five national brands during 2016, including analysis of brand awareness lift achieved by podcast advertising. Continue Reading
Podtrac released its January data for the top podcast publishers. The ranking only covers publishers that are Podtrac clients using its measurement systems. The list usually shows little change in the order from month to month, and the beginning of 2017 is no exception. Continue Reading
Prince’s catalog from Warner Bros is confirmed for release to streaming services on Sunday. NPR received word of the date from Napster, and the songs are expected to be available on most other streaming platforms as well. iHeartRadio has some purple plans for celebration. Universal has secured rights to manage the rest of Prince’s catalog. Continue Reading
Digital audio advertising sales and technology company Targetspot is announcing a new ad-serving and analytics platform called TargetSpot Passport. the platform is native to streaming audio publishers — TargetSpot lives alongside Radionomy and SHOUTcast as subsidiaries of media giant Vivendi. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Should radio still care about song sales? Super Bowl spike for Lady Gaga. Ticketmaster makes a music hire. Continue Reading
Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Research reviews developments centered on video content that appeared in headlines this week. Both music videos and music-related videos look to be strong categories. Continue Reading
Google is combining some of its separate music teams in a move that could signal changes for its many products down the line. The groups working on YouTube Music and Google Play Music are being joined. Continue Reading
Billboard published its Power 100 list for 2017. The ranking includes several prominent leaders in the streaming music industry from companies including Apple Music, iHeartMedia, and Pandora. Spotify Chairman/CEO Daniel Ek took the No. 1 spot. Continue Reading
Music video platform Vevo has hired Kevin McGurn as its chief sales officer. McGurn was previously head of sales at YouTube multi-channel network Fullscreen. Continue Reading
Podcast and on-demand audio platform Acast announced the launch of a Recommendations feature. This tool uses machine learning to find new content tailored to a particular listener’s tastes. Continue Reading