Following a charge by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has invalidated the key elements of the patent that Personal Audio was using to demand license fees from podcasters. The EFF’s argument was that Personal Audio had not invented anything new, and that the technique should not have been patented because it would have been obvious to other developers. Continue Reading
In a special research presentation at RAIN Summit West, Edison Research President Larry Rosin presented previously unreleased research from the 2015 edition of his company’s Infinite Dial survey project, focusing on car ownership and in-car listening. Continue Reading
Spotify is reportedly working on raising $400 million in funding, unnamed sources told The Wall Street Journal. This funding round values the company at $8.4 billion. Industry leaders have been speculating as to when Spotify may pursue an IPO for a long time, but the streaming service has not given any hint about a plan to sell. Continue Reading
Triton Digital has received certification for inclusion of Nielsen audience measurement technology in Triton streaming audio players, the company announced this afternoon. This development enables Nielsen to measure online streaming metrics of its broadcast clients through Triton’s streaming suite on desktop, Android, and iOS. Continue Reading
Advertising software company WideOrbit announced an agreement with Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS), to make SBS’s digital ad inventory available to marketers on WideOrbit’s programmatic platform, WO Programmatic – Digital. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Millennials, social media, and big data; indie labels’ snapshot of digital music; online radio listening by age. Continue Reading
Amazon has expanded its Prime Music app on the Android operating system to include its new stations feature. The app now includes hundreds of Pandora-style lean-back listening channels without advertisements. Continue Reading
GEMA, a German collection society, announced that its 2014 global revenue was €893.6 million euros (about $950 million). Streaming revenue accounted for €44.8 million, up from €26.4 million in 2013, but GEMA came out with a strong statement against the current royalty split between rights holders, songwriters, and publishers. Continue Reading
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THIS WEEK: Streaming exclusives don’t stay exclusive; Webcast listening reaches new record; when a music label and a bank hook up; milestone moment for 8tracks; Pandora pays more than half of all webcast royalties Continue Reading
Barely a day goes by without seeing some article about a songwriter whose song was played a million times on a digital music service like Pandora or Spotify, with the artist only receiving a relatively small amount of royalty revenue from that seemingly large number of plays. A number of issues are misunderstood — especially about big numbers. Continue Reading
Triton Digital announced that it has completed an annual review of accreditation by the Media Rating Council (MRC), and that the accreditation of Triton’s Webcast Metrics and Webcast Metrics Local ratings products remains unchanged. Continue Reading
AdLarge added another podcast deal to its growing portfolfio of exclusive ad-representation agreements for on-demand audio, this one with RotoWire for its line of fantasy sports podcasts. RotoWire produces daily podcasts for fantasy sports players in football, baseball, and basketball, plus weekly shows in audio and video. Continue Reading