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A six-minute blast of news you need to know in streaming music and online audio. This week: RAIN Summit Europe, Taylor Swift and Spotify, SoundCloud and Warner Music, licensing news, Beats Music on airplanes, a new podcast network, and streaming audiobooks. Continue Reading
Australia-based Guvera announced its official mobile launch in India. The streaming service’s free app is available for iOS and Android listeners. “We plan to provide our Indian users with the best expert-curated local and international content,” founder Claes Loberg said. The app will include Bollywood music as well as songs by international artists. Continue Reading
Advertising and monetization of streaming audio was a key topic at RAIN Summit Europe (Nov. 4 in London). In the “Streaming Ad Sales Strategies” panel, programmatic advertising got a lot of attention. Read highlights and listen to the entire panel. Continue Reading
Roger Lanctot is Associate Director of Strategy Analytics, and a thought leader in the connected-car space. In this guest article, he discusses the competitive in-car triangle of AM/FM, Pandora, and Sirius XM. Continue Reading
Scribd, a digital book service, launched an all-you-can-read ebook subscription program last year. Now, it has added an audiobook component to its offerings. The plan costs $8.99 a month and offers unlimited reading and listening within its catalog. It currently has more than half a million ebooks and more than 30,000 audiobooks available. The rollout of audiobooks within Scribd’s service highlights a few of the recent trends that the entertainment and media industries should be keeping tabs on. Continue Reading
Earlier this week, sources hinted that Microsoft may be working on a music locker service. Windows Central reported that the company’s cloud storage service, OneDrive, will now automatically create a music folder for your account. This folder would store a person’s own music collection, but sources said it would likely also connect with the existing Xbox Music service. Continue Reading
SoundExchange announced its third-quarter financials, reporting a payment of $267 million for the three-month period. That figure was 75% higher than the $153.7 million payout from Q3 2013. The number of payees also increased between quarters, rising from 25,836 in Q3 2013 to 31,376 in Q3 2014. Continue Reading
A legal tug-of-war between Pandora and performing rights organization BMI has been in progress since a ruling last December, and it took a new twist last week when BMI reportedly advised Pandora that it does not expect any major music publishers to withdraw their catalogs at the end of 2014. This communication was strong on reassurance but weak in specifics. Continue Reading
Streaming just got a little more legitimacy from industry leaders in Australia and New Zealand. Singles charts in both countries announced that they will factor streaming numbers into their calculations. Both the Australian Recording Industry Association and the New Zealand Top 40 said streaming data will help determine the No. 1 songs. Continue Reading
Vodafone and Spotify announced an Australian partnership in early October, and today more details emerged about how the two services will support each other. Customers on Vodafone’s Red plans will have access to Spotify Premium for free. The amount of time customers will have the free Premium service — from six months to 24 months — depends on the plan they choose. Continue Reading
Publisher Kobalt announced that for the first time, its writers received greater royalties from Spotify than from iTunes. During the first quarter of 2014, Spotify royalties in Europe were 13% higher than those earned from iTunes downloads in the region. We’re still a long way from declaring victory for the streaming financial model, since this change has only been observed in Europe for Kobalt’s stable of about 6,000 songwriters and artists. However, Spotify’s first success over the long-dominant Apple-owned store is still a notable milestone. Continue Reading
After a bobble in negotiations last month, SoundCloud and Warner Music Group have signed a licensing deal. “The deal includes innovative licensing terms that will provide WMG and its artists greater ability to manage the availability of content, while providing a path towards delivering additional revenue from user-generated mixes and mash-ups of WMG music,” SoundCloud said. Continue Reading