Quick Hits: Streaming revenue vs GDP; Nielsen SoundScan adds Bandzoogle; Apple’s revamped Music app

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:

Analyzing streaming revenues against GDP: Adoption of streaming technologies (and how likely listeners are to pay for them) varies wildly by country. In general, the Scandinavian region has had good success with turning subscription streaming into a viable business model. In this article, Billboard crunched the numbers on streaming revenue growth as a portion of GDP for several countries, with a focus on industry darlings Sweden and Finland.

SoundScan will include Bandzoogle sales: Nielsen has made a lot of deals in the online music business in recent months, and the latest is Bandzoogle, a website-building service focused on bands. Music sales happening on Bandzoogle sites will now be reported to Nielsen SoundScan’s data collection, which powers the Billboard charts.

Apple’s redesigned mobile Music app: The go-to expert in all things Apple, 9to5Mac has a hands-on with the latest version of the Music app that will appear in iOS 8.4. The new mobile operating system is in a closed beta for developers, and the Music app has a few notable updates in the Radio section. The site has lots of screenshots of the current version of Music, but it’s possible there will be additional changes to the app after Apple’s anticipated relaunch of the Beats subscription streaming platform.

Anna Washenko