It’s Advertising Week in New York this week. Jennifer Lane was there, and attended a panel sponsored by XAPP Media featuring a discussion of online audio ad campaigns. Bryan Moffett of NPR, Brian Benedik of Spotify, and Cathy Csukas of AdLarge talked about the push to offer innovative opportunities to advertisers. Continue Reading
Grooveshark received some damning news from a New York district court judge yesterday, but it is still trying to swim on. Today the streaming and uploading service shared a blog post with a response to the ruling. “This latest news dealt specifically with an early version of Grooveshark which we dispensed of in 2008 in favor of our current music streaming service,” the company said. Continue Reading
In a wide-ranging conversation with Digitally Imported executives,, RAIN learned that the leading Electronic Music online radio outlet is planning an ambitious evolution of the service. The new Digitally Imported, details of which will be divulged later this month, will position itself as a complete music consumption platform for EDM and other sub-genres of electronic music, combining music discovery and buying functions in a way that founder Ari Shohat describes as “integrated in unique, special ways.” Continue Reading
We’ve been looking for signs that YouTube and Google are making progress with a long-awaited music subscription service, and today Reuters has what seems to be a legit update. Reuters interviewed Jamie Rosenberg, Google’s vice president of digital content, about the company’s plans and learned that its music services are expected to see updates in the near future. Continue Reading
SoundCloud’s kettle boiled over this summer when major labels (“the majors”) started to enforce their intellectual property rights upsetting the service’s large community of Producers and DJs. After seven years of maintaining the same service, SoundCloud took drastic steps to change its design, and more importantly, its functionality. Many of the functionality changes likely occurred from the growing concern over potentially copyright-infringing works that inhabit the platform. Although SoundCloud has remedied the situation temporarily to satisfy the smaller artists, it could run into further problems down the road. Continue Reading
adStream is a journal of ad-stalking and interesting commercial sightings in online audio services. It had been a while since we had turned our ad-stalking attention to Slacker Radio. We wanted to see whether Slacker deployed a similar full-court press as Pandora, which frequently covers our phone screen with a graphic ad that must be manually closed to see what’s playing. Continue Reading
Once a pioneer, subscription music-download site eMusic is striking out afresh with news of a change its music catalog to focus on indie labels and artists. The service will discontinue major-label recordings. In doing so, eMusic circles back to its roots as a champion of indie music, and of users who dig deeper than the hit charts. Continue Reading
Mark Kassof shared data from a recent survey about the attitudes of teenagers toward FM radio. The 506 online surveys of respondents aged 13 to 20 revealed that only 7% listened to FM radio the most for music. Even online streams of terrestrial stations had limited reach. Just 16% of respondents said they listened to online radio station streams often, while 31% said the did so sometimes. Twenty percent hardly ever listened and 26% have never done so. Smartphone apps for AM and FM radio stations also had limited reach: 49% have never listened on those services. Continue Reading
It seems yesterday’s news was just the tip of the iceberg in Grooveshark’s copyright woes. Today, a district court judge ruled that Grooveshark is liable for copyright infringement because its employees uploaded tracks without the labels’ permission. The judge determined that these uploads were not protected by the DCMA safe harbor provisions. Continue Reading
In March we covered the first ruling in a years-long court case against Michael Robertson, founder of MP3Tunes.com. The verdict went badly for Robertson, who faced a bill for $48-million in damages and punitive compensation. Now the presiding judge has reduced the punitive component of the verdict to one-tenth of its original size — from $7.5-million to $750,000. Continue Reading
After several weeks on an invite-only basis, Spotify has made its official entrance into Canada. The Swedish streaming platform staked a claim to “one of the most extensive Canadian music catalogues available,” with access to more than 20 million songs in the market. It noted a “comprehensive Quebecois library” within those millions of tunes, according to VentureBeat. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worth reads from around the web. TODAY: Samsung partners with Google streaming music; digital radio in France, a streaming hit in the U.K. Continue Reading