At RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas, Tom Webster of Edison Research gave an informative and entertaining special presentation called “The New Curators.” He included new, previously unpublished information from The Infinite Dial 2014, a joint project of Edison and Triton Digital. Also: “Eyeglasses, dresses, Gnutella, and the most embarrassing record in my record collection.” Click for video. Continue Reading
Pono Music, the nascent high-fidelity portable music player and download store founded by Neil Young, brings its Kickstarter campaign to a close today having nearly octupled (if that’s a word) the original goal of $800,000. The current tally is $6.1-million with three hours to go. Impressive, but still probably a niche product. Continue Reading
All indicators point to mobile for nearly all Internet activities, and especially for listening to music. Pandora is the fifth most-downloaded mobile app, according to comScore. Which is a shame for advertisers who buy the full-screen treatment on Pandora’s browser experience. The big, full-screen ads on Pandora are like album art for advertisers. Continue Reading
The 2014 edition of Jacobs Media’s annual techsurvey10 is out (slides here), revealing sharp increases in digital devices, social platforms, and mediums among core radio listeners. Use of digital services and devices grew across the board from the previous year. Interesting results specific to Pandora. Continue Reading
Bette Midler is the latest high-profile musician to launch a complaint about revenue from music streaming, a meme that we refer to as the Spotify Debate. Spotify and Pandora bear the lash of musicians’ anger more than most other services — and suffer the resulting confusion, too. Continue Reading
The latest music/telecom partnership is on the way, as Spotify and Sprint reportedly work on a bundling deal to be announced later this month, perhaps modeled on the tie-up of Beats Music with AT&T, which offers discounted music subscription to families using the cell-phone service. Continue Reading
Deezer and Samsung announced a partnership that would give buyers of Samsung’s Galaxy S5 phone a free six-month trial of Deezer’s subscription music service. The plan would work in selected countries only, where Paris-based Deezer operates the service. The Samsung deal takes a page from SiriusXM’s distribution strategy in cars. Continue Reading
RAIN Hotspots — the five most-read articles of the week. Pandora and Nielsen Audio dominated the week, with some Jason Calacanis thrown in. Our report of Calacanis’ keynote address at RAIN Summit West was the second-most read post. Continue Reading
Bloom.FM, an on-demand music app, report-tweeted it has been knocked out of the iTunes Radio ad rotation after spending 2,000 British pounds a month on commercials for its service. Bloom.FM spokespeople are enjoying their new image as a prospective iTunes Radio killer. Continue Reading
RAIN Summit West, the premiere educational and networking conference for the online audio industry, occurred on April 6 in Las Vegas. A powerful agenda included an all-star lineup of executives and celebrated thought leaders participating in 14 onstage events. Click for the full audio of the all-day event, organized as a playlist. Stream in full, or pick single session. Continue Reading
If integrated broadcast and webcast ratings is the holy grail of radio audience measurement, Nielsen Audio took a new step toward holistic metrics this week when SVP Farshad Family broadly described how it intends to track online radio streams. A three-pronged approach would deliver listening data. Continue Reading
Digital measurement firm comScore released new data on mobile and smartphone usage last week. Two streaming apps, YouTube and Pandora, are in the top five. Pandora’s mobile strategy is the key to the streaming platform’s amazing success. With more than 70% of their listeners on mobile, Pandora understood that concept early and capitalized on it. Continue Reading