Spotify has added a former top VH1 exec to its top leadership. Tom Calderone, whose past posts included president of VH1, is now the streaming platform’s global head of content partnerships. Continue Reading
First Episode is a Friday podcast discovery feature spotlighting new and almost-new shows. In this edition, a new program from WTOP, deep interviews by Kevin Rose, and a couple of TV lovers talk with actors. It’s Friday. Get listening. Continue Reading
Facebook has added a Spotify tie-in to its Messenger app. It’s the first music platform to work with the social network’s messaging program. The updated version began rolling out to both iOS and Android this week. Continue Reading
Data from the group Marketing and Consulting for Digital Technologies tracked the growth of DAB+ radios in Switzerland. The number of sets among Swiss population have been growing steadily since 2006. Continue Reading
Juniper Research returned from Mobile World Congress, the preeminent global exhibition of new mobile technology, and summarized its assessment of 2016 trends. (Download here.) We have pulled out the point pertinent to the future of digital audio, spiced with commentary. Continue Reading
Last summer, SoundHound shared an early look at its plans for a new personal assistant app. Hound promised to have a fresh take on voice activation and control, offering a step up from the currently available crop of programs. This week, the free app emerged from beta. How does it stack up? Continue Reading
Yesh Music and John Emanuele have expanded their class-action lawsuit over unpaid royalty claims, adding Google Play Music to the growing roster of defendants. As with the suits against Tidal and Slacker Radio, the plaintiffs claim that they did not receive correctly executed notices of intent from Google about streaming their creations. Continue Reading
Rhapsody parent company RealNetworks released its financial information for 2015, including the performance for the streaming service. Rhapsody CFO Ethan Rudin did not comment on the results, but said the company has “never been more excited or optimistic about a category that we helped define in early 2001.” Continue Reading
Spotify has embarked on many efforts to provide music discovery to its audience, and the latest move in that direction is a playlist collection called Fresh Finds. The programming choices for these playlists will stem from both sides of the playlist creation coin: human curation and data-driven algorithms. Continue Reading
SFX is making plans to auction off online EDM portal Beatport as it continues through bankruptcy proceedings. It has attracted interested parties for the property and will solicit initial bids in April with an auction slated for May 3. Continue Reading
Sony music labels have filed a lawsuit in a California federal court. The suit complains that Radionomy has not paid appropriate licensing royalties for use of music recordings since late 2014. Three labels are participating in the filing: Sony Music Entertainment, LaFace Records, and Arista Records. Continue Reading
XAPPmedia released its Q4 ad load report, which saw an increase to the average ad load for Internet radio while the average time to first ad continues to drop. It found that the average ad load rose 5.7% from the third quarter to 2 minutes, 29 seconds. Continue Reading