One of the big insights about Internet radio in recent weeks — triggered by an analysis by Bridge Ratings last month and reinforced in sessions at RAIN Summit East last week — is that while Internet radio listening is growing at a fast pace, the audiences for streams that are simulcasts of terrestrial radio stations, according to Webcast Metrics, appear to be flat to declining.

This makes sense. As AccuRadio COO John Gehron points out,…
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The following first appeared as a Billboard.biz Guest Post I wrote as founder/CEO of AccuRadio and a member of the Small Webcaster Alliance. It appeared on Tuesday, the eve of yesterday’s subcommittee hearing.

As an Internet radio broadcaster and member of the Small Webcaster Alliance, I’ve been involved in the issue of copyright royalty rates for Internet radio for many years. And I’ve seen vividly that the current royalty rate system threatens to strangle the life out of an industry that is providing both choices for consumers and opportunities for musicians.

Both…
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Speaking on a panel at the Future of Music Summit in Washington D.C. earlier this week, I was surprised at the ambivalence (at best!) of musicians towards Internet radio and the opportunities it offers them to build their fan bases and advance their careers.

After all, if you’re a bluegrass artist in St. Louis or a cabaret singer in San Diego or a folk-rock act in Boston, which form of radio is going to offer the most opportunities to you — AM/FM radio, satellite radio, or Internet radio? Obviously, I think, the latter. AM/FM and satellite radio will almost certainly give you no…
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If you’re a webcaster struggling with issues involving ad insertion, you can be comforted by the fact that at least you’re not alone — the multi-billion dollar corporation NBC (owned by the multi-multi-billion corporation Comcast) is having issues too.

Just as my grandmother had what she called “her shows” (e.g., the noontime soap opera “The Edge of Night”), I have my shows too. In my case, they’re primarily the Thursday-night comedies on NBC (e.g., “30 Rock,” “Parks and Recreation,” and “The Office”).

And because I’m trying to be cutting-edge, I’m trying to “cut the cord…
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After dinner last night (at Bandera on N. Michigan Ave., by the way, which is a sister brand of Houston’s, at which I’ve probably eaten 200+ times in my lifetime and had a near-perfect meal every time, which is the subject of another column entirely), I had the opportunity to stop by an Apple Store and take a look at the new iPad mini.

My two-word review: It’s amazing.

To expand on that review slightly: It’s like holding in your hand the most perfect electronic device ever. It’s almost unbelievably compact and lightweight, yet because the screen takes up a bigger…
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Pandora’s stock has taken a big hit in recent weeks due to rumors that Apple is considering entering the Internet radio space. Similar concerns have been raised about Microsoft recently “reentering” the space of Internet radio (actually, it’s already in and has been for years — it’s simply rebranding its less-than-stellarly-successful “Zune Music Pass” as “Xbox Music Pass”), about the fact that Spotify is offering radio channels, and about the possibility of Google competing in the music space.

In all of these cases, I think the alarm is over-exaggerated.

Here’s why: Each…
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One of the big lessons I picked up from the marketing books of Al Ries and Jack Trout — “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind,” “Marketing Warfare,” “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing,” and several others — is the importance of having a color associated with your brand.

A great example is the world of rent-a-cars. The original leading firm in the space, Hertz, has used yellow (with black highlights) for decades. The “#2” firm (and I’m using quotation marks because they’re actually #3, but their marketing angle is that they’re #2 (so they try harder)) is Avis, which picked red…
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