In a punchy keynote address at the New Music Seminar in New York yesterday, SoundExchange CEO Michael Huppe provocatively claimed that music sales decrease when radio plays songs. Huppe used that theme to support an argument that broadcast radio should be required to pay performance royalties to artists and labels, from which radio is currently exempt. Continue Reading
Internet radio executives from across Europe will meet in London, England on Tuesday November 4th for the 3rd annual RAIN Summit Europe. For over a decade, RAIN Summit conferences have been the premiere educational and networking events for the Internet radio and online audio industry. Continue Reading
Internet listening gained four percent in April over march, according to data released by Triton Digital in its Webcast Metrics Top 20 Ranker. The two-percent gain from the previous month lifted total stream listening into new-high territory. April is the ninth consecutive month of… Continue Reading
Seeking to capitalize on the quick rise in demand for digital advertising solutions, WideOrbit, a leading provider of business management software to media companies, has acquired Abacast, a technology company providing ad-insertion tools to webcasters. Continue Reading
ROK Mobile is a new company which intends to join streaming music to mobile phone service more inseparably than ever before. The value equation of streaming music in a wireless phone plan, in an era when music listening is increasingly a mobile consumer behavior, is not lost on the founders of ROK Mobile, which will launch in the U.S. on July 4. Continue Reading
Beats Electronics (recently acquired by Apple) file a trademark revision dated April 25, expanding the protected use of its iBeats trademark.
Formerly assigned only to the in-ear Beats headphones product, the application for expanded protection covers uses that seem clearly aimed at potentially rebranding Beats Music, in whole or part. Continue Reading
RAIN Hotspots — the five most-read articles last week. Price Waterhouse Cooper predicts the music business … Steve Goldstein looks for radio in his new car … interview with the CEO of Commotion, a unique social app for radio … Siri gets Shazam … Pandora’s spot load in May. Continue Reading
The rumor factory is never idle for long these days. Days after Apple turned rumor into reality by acquiring Beats Electronics (including Beats Music), unnamed sources told the New York Post that Google is interested in grabbing Internet radio brand Songza, at a reported value of $15-million. Continue Reading
Internet Radio REWIND, an audio recap of the week. This weekly podcast is a quick and concise catch-up of the week’s top stories. This week: Apple’s announcements …. The future of the music industry … the U.S. government might change music licensing … and independent labels throw YouTube under the bus. Continue Reading
This week, the United States Department of Justice announced that it would review the consent decrees that set the rules for Performance Rights Organizations ASCAP and BMI for the licensing of musical works on all forms of broadcast and in venues. Guest commentary by Casey Rae, VP for Policy and Education at the Future of Music Coalition. Continue Reading
Can a music service deliver good comedy programming? That’s what we intended to find out. We turned off the tunes and hunted for laughs in major music services to see how well the genre was represented and serviced. Continue Reading
Boutique investment banking firm Coady Diemar released its June edition of the Random Bits note to investors. Focused on digital music, with particular attention to the Apple/Beats acquisition, the analysis concludes that the so-called access model is supplanting music ownership. Continue Reading