Last spring, Spotify turned heads with the announcement of plans to turn its streaming audio platform into a more comprehensive entertainment hub with podcasts and video content. Over the following months, there has been curiosity and increasing impatience about when those changes would hit the service. This is the week. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Questioning music discovery options; when auto marketing meets media; is there a music tech bubble? Continue Reading
EDM specialist Beatport has entered into a partnership with Looplabs, a collaborative music studio platform. The deal seems focused on fostering crossover between the two services’ audience bases. Even though Beatport is still engaging with other music platforms, parent company SFX Entertainment has been drawing lots of scrutiny. Continue Reading
A report from the Netherlands’ music industry group shared the nation’s music industry performance for last year. The NVPI estimated that the Dutch music industry grew by about 10%. The results marked some stability after years of declines. Continue Reading
The beginning of a new year often brings a wave of new product and company launches. In light of the recent interest in podcasting, this year brings a new app called ZCast into the audio content field. Continue Reading
A new report from MUSO tracked the global piracy trends in 2015 and found that the amount of music downloaded from illegal sites increased over the course of the year. The second half of the year saw 16.5% more illegal music downloads over the first half of the year. Continue Reading
7digital has released a preliminary look at its financial results from 2015 in advance of the complete report, which is due out at the end of March. The company said the results for the year ended in line with expectations, with overall revenue expected to be in line with 2014’s total. Continue Reading
Live365 has informed at least some of its webcasters that it will be shutting down at the end of the month. The Internet radio hosting platform laid off the bulk of its staff and left its offices at the end of December, shortly after the Copyright Royalty Board decision about new rates, and the expiration of a law protecting small webcasters, sent shockwaves through the webcasting community. Continue Reading
App Annie released its 2015 Retrospective report, and as usual, it has some pointed insights into both the mobile and mobile music markets. Spotify took the crown for revenue and users worldwide, but there are several countries where more localized streaming services had the most participation. Continue Reading
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Is Serial the most successful podcast ever? You’d think so, reading media hype about it. Confusion about podcast success metrics is a deeply rooted problem. Individual network solutions give early movers an advantage, and customized ad-serving technology is putting intelligence into the system too. Continue Reading
Slate’s Panoply division has created a new platform focused on creation, monetization, and distribution of podcasts. The new content management system is called Megaphone. It was built on ad-insertion technology from Audiometric, which Panoply acquired in August. Continue Reading
Just about anyone working in the broadcast or media worlds should be familiar with Studs Terkel. The Pulitzer Prize-winner made his name on his probing interviews with both the leading thinkers of the day and the average workaday citizens of the United States alike. Now, a new project by Chicago’s WFMT Radio Network aims to preserve and digitize Terkel’s radio shows. RAIN News readers have also been granted exclusive access to a pair of his interviews from the late 1960s. Continue Reading