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
RAIN’s Weekend Perspective summarizes the week’s important events for a weekend catch-up, and revives your aching synapses for coming week. NEW & BETA Google Glass eases into music: Google’s streaming music service might be coming to the jazzy wearable computer.… Continue Reading
We noticed the new Hunger Games soundtrack album as a streaming playlist in iTunes Radio, which supported our repeated observation that “album release” no longer has much meaning. In the years when radio was the only mass-market music discovery venue,… Continue Reading
Not to trivialize business issues for musicians, but the “Spotify debate” rages on which increasing repetition. Some of the publicized outbursts against Spotify result from musicians being asked about it by journalists. The latest high-profile musician to take a club… Continue Reading
Streaming music service Songza updated its personalization features in a new iOS app which dropped into the Apple app store this week. Users can now see a list of their thumbs-up song votes, and play them as a playlist. That… Continue Reading