Amazon is reportedly negotiating with music labels about an Amazon-branded music service. According to Recode’s sources, the talks are not flying along because Amazon is asking for more favorable licensing terms than those negotiated by music-only services. Continue Reading
In an interesting and opportunistic maneuver, U.S.-based music service Rdio has acquired teetering Indian streaming platform Dhingana. Dhingana will power Rdio’s India launch sometime this year. The Indian music business is estimated at $170-million, mostly comprised of Bollywood (or “filmi”) songs. Around the edges, Indipop, regional music, devotional songs, and infiltrations of Western pop are additional categories. Continue Reading
The General Manager of Rhapsody-owned Napster Europe caused some raised eyebrows, confused head-scratching, and probably an internal memo or two, when he was quoted in an Inquirer interview saying that streaming platforms will always be mainly discovery tools for buying CDs. The remark clearly didn’t play well, so Schliesche went back to The Inquirer to revise the record. Continue Reading
This guest column is from Anthony Gherghetta, Creative Director at The App Studio in Melbourne, Australia. “Broadcast radio is at a pivot point where it needs to slightly change direction or risk being left behind. In two or three years the ship will have sailed. Revolutions need revolutionaries and radio needs them now.” Continue Reading
Currently, iTunes Radio is packed into the default Music app, the icon for which which cannot be removed from the iPhone/iPod/iPad desktop. The iTunes Radio brand is not spelled out anywhere in the system. As a review point of the service and its accessibility, we think iTunes Radio should exist as a separate identity in iOS. Continue Reading
Nielsen-owned (as of February) Harris Interactive conducts an annual nationwide poll of U.S. consumers to determine what it calls “brand equity.” Harris has released the 2014 edition, and called out streaming services for their rapid gain in positive brand recognition over the last two years. Continue Reading
In the wake of Audi’s announcement of its Internet-enabled 2015 A3 model car, with high-speed 4G LTE connectivity built in, we asked reader whether they would pay for a data plan for their cars. It was the most lopsided RAIN Poll yet. 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
Editor’s Notebook: Shortly before noon today, my Android phone pinged with an iHeartRadio notification of a deadly explosion and building collapse in New York. Good job. But the resulting radio experience was ruinous, putting radio’s commercial-load problem in bold relief. There might be a solution. Continue Reading
PonoMusic fixes what Neil Young regards as a quality problem with existing music players. He has created a high-quality audio ecosystem (player + download store) that goes against at least three current rends in music consumption. Nevertheless, the PonoMusic Kickstarter campaign is a goal-smashing success. Continue Reading
Jelli has completed its transformation from a listening app to an ad platform with today’s announcement of SpotPlan, which Jelli claims is the first programmatic advertising platform for radio. Programmatic ad-buying is well-established on the Web at large, and is used for planning ad campaigns in streaming audio. Continue Reading
In what could be described as the first crack in The Echo Nest’s music-powering empire, Rdio CEO Anthony Bay told CNBC that his music service would end its relationship with the music-data company. The Echo Nest was acquired by Spotify last week, and Bay doesn’t want his user metrics visible to a competitor. Continue Reading