Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Forbes on podcasting; India and Internet radio; an oral history on CDs’ last days; call for “more innovators and fewer lawyers.” Continue Reading
Rhapsody International has named Mike Davis as its first CEO effective immediately. The company is the parent organization for the Rhapsody and Napster streaming services. Continue Reading
Sony has taken steps to assume sole ownership of the Sony/ATV publishing branch, buying out the stake owned by Michael Jackson’s estate. However, the move has raised some concerns among the other labels. Warner Music Group and a collection of independent labels have brought their concerns over the buyout before the European Commission. Continue Reading
Billboard has named Spotify as its official streaming partner for 2016. With this new deal, Spotify will power playback on more than 75 charts from the music organization. It will also supply tunes for a New Music Fridays editorial and for three new Spotify-centric charts. Continue Reading
Everyone has their preferred ways to relax. And we love to see digital media channels sharing a sense of humor and pop culture savvy. Thus we report that, for the stoners of the world, iHeartRadio is honoring today’s date (4/20) by featuring WeedStream on its homepage. Continue Reading
The lawsuit filed by David Lowery against Spotify has gotten a new wrinkle today. Lowery’s legal team has filed a request to see all the correspondence sent by the streaming service to potential participants in the class action suit related to Spotify’s recent settlement with the National Music Publishers Association. Continue Reading
Shazam announced a new feature focused on businesses looking to use the recognition app for marketing. Shazam for Brands adds more ability to create data-driven storytelling on top of the core Shazam functionality. It offers tools for data collection and analysis, branded content, and more scannable material for customers to engage with. Continue Reading
Jacobs Media has released the results of TechSurvey 12, its annual survey of P1 radio listeners in the U.S. and Canada. The expressed preferences in media usage showed little variation this year from the TechSurvey 11, but the latest results did see some changes in attitudes about digital services, car listening, and podcasts. Continue Reading
The cadre of apps for listening and playlisting across streaming services has got yet another member. Qus is an app that can pull tunes from YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Deezer in addition to locally stored tracks. This is becoming a more common approach to mobile listening, but few of the latest entries have shown anything that indicates they’ll stand the test of time. Continue Reading
Chinese conglomerate Alibaba unveiled a new music property today. Alibaba Planet is a tiered platform for building fan-artist relationships and for music creatives to connect with each other. China is subject to some complicated regulations when it comes to music streaming, so it will be interesting to see just how that component of Alibaba Planet unfolds. Continue Reading
Amazon announced new month-by-month options for how its users can access Prime membership perks and its streaming video features. The entire Prime service can still be bought as an annual subscription for $99, but now is also available for $10.99 a month. That alone is a marked shift in Amazon’s model, but it has also made the Prime Video streaming service available as a standalone for $8.99 a month. Continue Reading
Webcast listening in February grew by 8% compared to January, and notched a 17% rise year-over-year, according to Triton Digital’s monthly Webcast Metrics Top 20 Ranker, released yesterday. Click through for historical charts. Continue Reading