Pandora announced higher prices for its premium listening plan, Pandora One. The changes result from escalating royalty costs to labels and performers, according to the blog-post announcement, and will take effect for some subscribers this week. The price changes affect 3.3-million premium users, out of 250-million registered users. Continue Reading
Do you ever wish your classic rock station were … less classic? Obviously, lovers of the genre don’t mind hearing the same music over and over for years on end. But there is a deeper level to rock oldies that can result in a sweet moment of recognition: “Oh yeah! I haven’t thought about that song in ages!” Continue Reading
Napster — one of the most loved, loathed, and lasting brands in the history of online music. The Napster brand is audaciously being used by Ryan Lester, a college student taking some time off for personal projects. Lester has put up Napster.FM, implicitly arguing that a brand’s trademark does not extend across top-level domains — dot-com and dot-fm, for example. Continue Reading
Tom Conrad, Chief Technology Officer and EVP of Product at Pandora, announced today via a blog post that he will transition out of his full-time position in three months. Conrad’s double role as technology/product head will be filled by two people going forward. Chris Martin, previously VP of Engineering, is promoted to CTO. Continue Reading
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) released its report of 2013 sales and revenue today. (PDF here.) The main bullet point is that streaming is the fastest-growing segment of the recorded-music industry, and its revenue contributes to keeping the industry stable. Streaming has contributed a continually escalating percentage of total revenue since 2007. Continue Reading
Radio and records — if you’re of a certain age, that’s what “home listening” meant while growing up. Now, listening at home has more options than all the new definitions of “radio” and “records.” What is your favorite device for listening to music and audio at home? Vote your favorite! Hard to choose? Give us more context in a comment. Continue Reading
Pandora just saved about $21-million. The recently concluded ASCAP vs. Pandora trial could be framed as a draw, with the disputed royalty rate to publishers maintained. But crunching the arithmetic shows the court decision comes much closer to Pandora’s desired outcome than ASCAP’s, and provides a view of how much money Pandora saved — or ASCAP lost, depending on the viewpoint. Continue Reading
M. Luke McDonell is a writer, artist, and photographer living in San Francisco. A veteran of South by Southwest, she is contributing airy contributions from the 2014 show. This SXSW report is from the first weekend of SXSW Interactive. Continue Reading
RAIN Summit West will occur on Sunday, April 6th in Las Vegas. One afternoon panel is “Moving the Needle on Streaming Audio Ad Revenues,” moderated by Rockie Thomas, VP of Business Development at AdsWizz. Thomas will lead a discussion among a lineup of executives from SoundHound, Pandora, Spotify, Targetspot, Triton Digital. Continue Reading
The ASCAP vs. Pandora rate-setting trial, brought before a federal judge to determine how much Pandora must pay music publishers and composers to play recordings of their music, has ended in a preservation of Pandora’s existing rate. While Pandora hoped to lower that rate by a small amount, ASCAP hoped to raise payments by up to 62% Continue Reading
The five most-read articles last week: iHeartRadio’s news bulletin; Amazon’s possible music service; Mixcloud’s ambitions; Neil Young’s very successful bad idea; RAIN Poll results. Continue Reading
The Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) today released a 2013 revenue report for broadcast radio. By a wide margin, digital revenue led other income segments in year-over-year comparisons. Overall revenues were flat in 2013, when examined through two lenses: full year-over-year, and Q4 2013 vs. Q4 2012. Digital is growing fast from a small percentage of total radio revenue — 5% in 2013. Continue Reading