Spotify has partnered with Vodafone Ireland, one of many country-specific branches of the international telecom giant. The deal is another instance of a music service joining a telecom carrier in a synergy that benefits both companies. Continue Reading
RAIN spoke with CEO John McLeod about the upcoming H2 mobile app, which will be released to Apple’s mobile platform in about two weeks. He described how it works, the proposition for advertisers, and the 2014 distribution roadmap. Continue Reading
New York classical station WQXR started an experiment, launching an Internet-only offshoot called Q2 Music. The Q2 Music pureplay, which concentrates on less mainstream and more modern classical, averages over 82,000 stream sessions per month. RAIN spoke with Graham Parker, general manager of WQXR, about Q2 Music’s mission, programming, audience makeup, and affiliation with flagship WQXR and cousin WNYC. Continue Reading
A raft of new music services is heading to market in the next few months: YouTube, Beats Music (“Daisy”), Deezer in the U.S. Another might might join those ranks: Baboom, founded by notorious entrepreneur and hacker Kim Dotcom. Continue Reading
BIA/Kelsey today released its Annual U.S. Local Media Forecast for the next four years, with data covering 2012-2017. In it, two pillars of local-media revenue growth are identified: digital, and mobile. Traditional revenue (such as over-the-air and print) are forecast to remain essentially flat. RAIN spoke with BIA/Kelsey chief economist Mark Fratrik. Continue Reading
With more than 200 million registered users, Pandora’s collection of user data is substantial. Now they are beginning to use that data to create marketable audience segments that advertisers can use to target their campaigns. An article by guest contributor Jennifer Lane. Continue Reading
Today’s POTD spotlights pureplay aggregator LoudCity (www.loudcity.com), which, like larger players RadioTuna and Live365, enables and hosts personal Internet radio stations. Continue Reading
NASH FM is a country-music broadcast cluster operating in several markets, extending onto the web with a unified website template that accomplishes basic goals more cleanly and attractively than many others. NASH FM’s site design is better organized and more pleasing to the eye than some radio group templates that are applied to dozens or hundreds of stations. Continue Reading
In a press release this morning that serves as an advertisement for its holiday music stations, Pandora revealed some Christmas-season listening statistics.
We’ve been tracking the early rollout of Christmas music on terrestrial, subscription, and pureplay platforms, noting that there seems to be significant demand for holiday music in early November. Commenters in iHeartMusic’s Christmas stations jubilantly greeted their appearance a couple of weeks ago. Continue Reading
Last week’s drop of Google’s All Access music subscription app into Apple’s app store was a milestone moment in both the music-service wars and the larger tech-ecosystem land grab. We had fun with our “Google invades Apple” headline, and every media site covering the convergence of music and Internet hit the same note.
The invasion metaphor is apt, more than just for its imagery of two tech/media giants engaged in business warfare. Google’s Play Music All Access, awkwardly-named thought it might be, offers a more complete music platform than Apple does — and likewise for Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora, and Rdio. Continue Reading
With the tagline, “The Messenger of Good Music,” you can expect a broad programming range. Herald.FM (www.herald.fm) covers alt rock for the most part — Arctic Monkeys, Mumford & Sons, The Vaccines, Lana Del Rey, and Bleached have streamed through our speakers today. Continue Reading
The top five most-read articles this week. Continue Reading