Spotify released its 2013 financials, with a basic P&L that tells a vigorous growth story, higher revenue, and lower loss compared to the previous year. At the same time, most of the gross revenue was paid into the music industry as licensing expenses. Continue Reading
Nielsen posted interesting observations derived from a study of streaming activity for the week ending November 9. In that week, for the first time in the 10 years that Nielsen has been tracking online audio, more than 4-billion streams were consumed. Video streams also broke a record, surpassing 2-billion. Continue Reading
Podcast producer, ad-repping company, and listening platform Podcast One issued a takedown demand to podcast listening app Stitcher, calling for the removal of Podcast One programs from the Stitcher platform. We spoke with Podcast One founder Norm Pattiz about the situation status, and what it means for podcasting. Continue Reading
More Christmas listening than anyone can bear, thanks to George Bundy’s excellent annual directory of Christmas streaming at Webradio.fm. The Christmas Internet Radio page is a listing of broadcasters whose stations (or HD extensions) are into all-Christmas, followed by a long list of pureplay holiday programming. Continue Reading
Thanks to AccuRadio, which sponsored the video production of our London Summit on November 4, and thanks also to the outstanding audiovisual production team at 1 Wimpole Street, we can offer RAIN Summit Europe panels for viewing. Continue Reading
This week we noticed an intriguing and festive new feature: Amazon has released an original album of Christmas music as a free streaming playlist for Prime Music members. Called “All Is Bright,” it is Amazon’s first foray into original music content. Continue Reading
adStream is an ad-stalking journal in streaming audio.
Video ads in audio streams often convey the entire marketing message, even to listeners who aren’t looking at the screen, which is often the case. We have also spotted some video commercials on music services that require watching to deliver a fully branded message. Continue Reading
The push and pull between one of the world’s biggest audio publishers, Pandora, and one of its most important content providers, BMI (which represents a large catalog of music on behalf of composers and publishers), logged a new mile-marker last week. At issue is whether Pandora owns a “license-in-effect” to use BMI music. Continue Reading
After a flurry of letter-writing, efforts to reach a negotiation between SoundExchange and VerStandig Broadcasting have broken down. On Oct. 24, Judge Michael Urbanski gave the parties a month to resolve the issue on their own before the court stepped in to make a ruling. Continue Reading
Patrick Reynolds, Chief Strategy Officer of Triton Digital, and a featured speaker at RAIN Summit Europe, reflects on the Summit experience. Soundtrack provided. Continue Reading
The Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) released its third-quarter revenue report. In it, digital advertising revenue continues its year-over-year growth story, while traditional spot revenue continues to show incremental decline from comparison quarters. Continue Reading
T-Mobile announced the addition of several services to its Music Freedom plan, which lets listeners stream songs without counting the activity against their data plans. Google Play Music was the most-requested addition according to T-Mobile’s crowdsourcing efforts earlier this summer, and it is now included under the plan. Xbox Music and SoundCloud are the other better known names added to the list. Continue Reading