Crossing ecosystem boundaries can be as difficult as traveling across national borders. Google Music (both the download store and the All Access streaming-music app) is soon venturing into hostile fanboy territory by distributing its service to Apple mobile users. Engadget… Continue Reading
Earbits, an indie-music Internet radio platform, has operated since late 2011 on the web and in Android mobile devices. Now it has launched its first Apple iOS app, refreshing interest in its unique artist-reward system. Promoting itself as “Independent radio… Continue Reading
Samsung, whose products increasingly foster the untethered lifestyle, has come out with a wireless home sound system called Shape. It is so-called because the shape of Shape is … shapely. Most reviews compare Shape to Sonos, which, while nicely shaped… Continue Reading
RAIN’s Weekend Perspective reviews the week’s main events, and refreshes your synapses for next week. The week started with a legislative bang when Rep. Melvin Watt introduced the Free Market Royalty Act in Congress. (Just in time for a general governmental… Continue Reading
Digital single-track sales are down over the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period in 2012. The decline has accelerated quarter-over-quarter, with the July-Aug-Sep period showing a 6-percent skid, according to Billboard. Digital album sales have… Continue Reading
Muve Music is an interactive music subscription platform available exclusively to Cricket Wireless phone users on the Android platform. This narrow distribution funnel seems to work well for everyone involved, including users who have made Muve “the most popular on-demand… Continue Reading
The connected car, built with a digital dashboard and Internet-delivered audio, is an increasingly vital touchstone for both broadcast radio and Internet radio. With that in mind, research and consulting firm Jacobs Media is hosting DASH: The Connected Car AudioTainment(™)… Continue Reading
Inside Radio reported new diary-based research indicating that AM/FM radio occupies at least two-thirds of audio minutes heard across generational divides. The study is branded by USA TouchPoints, a metered-behavior service launched in 2011 under the wing of the Media… Continue Reading
Library music streaming: You can borrow ebooks from public libraries with an intermediary app called OverDrive. Now, a similar service has arrived for borrowing music and movies from local libraries, assisted by software app Hoopla. Hoopla stands between provider (media… Continue Reading
Google All Access expands to seven more countries: A search for this topic yields over 7,000 versions of a simple announcement: Google’s streaming and music-locker service is newly available in the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Russia, and… Continue Reading
In what could be characterized as a noble attempt to bridge the mass market’s preference for convenience over quality, and the audiophile’s choice of pristine audio over mobility, a Scandinavian streaming music service called WiMP has introduced lossless streaming. Lossless… Continue Reading
This morning Pandora released its monthly Audience Metrics bulletin, showing across-the-board growth in the company’s key indicators. Pandora’s reported listening hours grew to 1.36-billion, an 18% year-over-year gain from September 2012 (1.15B). Month over month, listening time marginally improved from… Continue Reading