According to a press release from Aspiro, the owners of WiMP and Tidal, the company has been approached with a bid for a public takeover. The roughly $56 million offer came from Project Panther Bidco, which is indirectly owned by S. Carter Enterprises. That sounds like a fairly routine acquisition, aside from the pertinent detail that S. Carter stands for Shawn Carter, better known as rap icon Jay-Z. Continue Reading
The Wall Street Journal reports that Spotify “has expressed a desire” to raise $500-million in private investment, and is working with Goldman Sachs to achieve it. Meanwhile, in an unrelated analysis, past RAIN Summit keynoter Jason Calacanis predicts that Facebook will acquire Spotify. Continue Reading
Guest columnist Larry Rosin, President of Edison Research, shares new results from Edison’s ongoing Share of Ear study. Broadcast radio has enviable daily reach, but it is changing. Continue Reading
In the frothing realm of connected cars, we know what the tech companies and automakers are doing. But what do car-buyers want? Nielsen’s new report on consumer preferences in connected cars points toward answers. Continue Reading
A recent IFPI survey revealed insights into the music industry in Norway. The survey found that streaming secured a larger portion of the country’s annual market sales value at 75%. Downloads were just 11% and physical formats were 14%. In 2013, streaming accounted for just 66% of the market, and physical sales had a 22% share. Continue Reading
Apple released some mind-boggling financial figures from the first quarter in its latest SEC filing. The company’s net income for Q1 was $18.02 billion on net sales of nearly $74.6 billion. Underneath the huge revenue, though, the news was not so good for iTunes. Continue Reading
Understanding podcast consumption is a notorious challenge for creators and publishers. Audio host and distributor Spreaker has addressed that concern for its customers with the launch of a new analytics portion of the service. Continue Reading
Several streaming services were recently approached with a potential class-action lawsuit focused on pre-1972 song copyright protection. Rdio was initially one of the defendants, but the company has reportedly been dropped from the legal action. Continue Reading
The Streaming Audio Marketplace, a RAIN News webinar and whitepaper sponsored by TargetSpot, is now freely available in two formats: a 50-page whitepaper, and the webinar slides. Click through to see the slides, and link to the whitepaper. Continue Reading
In a development that could impact streaming audience share of the competitive music-service market, Sony announced that it will launch PlayStation Music with Spotify as an exclusive partner. This means an integrated music service is coming to the PlayStation Network’s 64 million active users. Continue Reading
Ad-tech company XAPPmedia and mobile app developer jacapps have partnered to create JAX, a premium advertising service for the mobile audience. The alliance integrates voice-activated XAPP Ads into the jacapps mobile platform. Continue Reading
SoundExchange announced that it paid recording artists and labels $773 million in 2014. The record figure is 31% greater than the $590 million it paid out the previous year. The final quarter of 2014 boosted the full-year performance with more than 38,800 payments totaling approximately $183 million, improving on the already strong payments from Q3. Continue Reading