Stealing Beats thunder? Not really. Kim Dotcom, founder of the explosively named Baboom music service, which semi-announced its existence in November, is taking advantage of the U.S. holiday to get a jump on the much-publicized Beats Music debut tomorrow. But Baboom is a blip beside Beats. Continue Reading
Synergy and enhancement — those are the touchstones of Radionomy’s acquisition of ShoutCast and Winamp from AOL, which closed last week. We spoke with Thierry Ascarez, VP of Business Development for Radionomy, about how he views the integration of two iconic brands into Radionomy’s Internet radio platform. Continue Reading
As hordes of Americans spend their Sunday evenings with Downton Abbey and Sherlock, it’s worth noting that the Senate’s new spending budget, passed last week, includes continued funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). That money goes to public radio and TV. Continue Reading
Google takes “infographic” to the next level with a flowing interactive timeline of music genre popularity from 1950 to the present. You can see at a glance, as if from a cross-section of musical strata, how pop and rock displaced jazz in the 1960s, and how indie and hip-hop ate into those categories starting in the 1980s. Continue Reading
The quick and concise summary of the past week. Refresh your neurons, and prepare for the coming week. It’s going to be an eventful one! Continue Reading
When an old-media celebrity makes a “Gee Whiz!” recommendation of an online service that’s been around for nearly six years, you know that the service is inching into the mainstream. That’s what makes Bill O’Reilly’s video endorsement of Pandora more than just amusing, but also significant. Continue Reading
This week’s most-read articles! An odd reader survey, Kurt Hanson’s latest blog post, Spotify goes free in a new way, preview of Beats Music, Shazam and SoundHound take from radio and give to streaming, and the Net Neutrality law goes down. Continue Reading
Radio plays a strategic advantage over digital: non-variety. An interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal emphasizes the divide between the music-discovery advantage of music services compared to radio, but also spotlights what might be an odd competitive advantage of radio’s increasingly narrow playlists. Continue Reading
AYTM Market Research released a survey of mobile music consumers, which quantifies the devices they use, their listening sources, and whether they pay. Most of the survey’s results are unsurprising, but a startling number of respondents pay for multiple subscription services. Continue Reading
It’s as if Beats Music were a meteor headed for earth, and inhabitants on the ground were feeling the heat of its approach. Rdio has followed Spotify, making its web listening free and unlimited. Even Pandora has added a feature to counter Beats Music’s emphasis on curated listening. Continue Reading
Beats Music is launching next Tuesday, aiming squarely at Spotify’s subscription business. Spotify set the stage in December by freeing previous listening restrictions that applied to non-paying users. (That side of the business is ad-supported.) Today, Spotify makes more news by revealing a restriction most people didn’t know about, then lifting it. Continue Reading
BIA/Kelsey has published a study of mobile advertising growth, sponsored by mobile ad network Verve Mobile. While serving as promotion for Verve, the report also identifies data points and defines new advertising technologies. The key technology focus of this report is “Attribution,” which purports to quantify the effectiveness of mobile ads, post-impression. Continue Reading