Brian Lakamp, President of Digital at Clear Channel Media & Entertainment, will speak at RAIN Summit West on April 6 in Las Vegas. Lakamp oversees all of Clear Channel’s digital strategy, including the iHeartRadio music-listening app. Continue Reading
Earlier this week, RAINNews reported that an FM station in Boston – WKLB – is running spots for iTunes Radio. The spots are live reads, done by radio station personalities. When asked, the station, owned by Greater Media, issued a statement that kind of sounded like: “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” This doesn’t seem like an especially well thought-out strategy. Continue Reading
Market-leading Internet radio service Pandora released its monthly audience metrics for January today, showing year-over-year growth in its key metrics. In the short month of February, Pandora reports a larger audience and greater listening share over January’s metrics. Listening hours dropped a bit, but were essentially flat month-over-month. Continue Reading
The latest RAIN Poll asked about preferences for in-car listening. AM/FM wins. By a small margin, a plurality of votes selected terrestrial radio over music apps streamed in the car via a smartphone. Not a single vote was cast for “Dashboard apps.” Lots of interesting comments this week. Continue Reading
The best view we’ve seen of Apple’s new CarPlay app-control system for the car comes from Engadget, which created a “hands on” video of the system inside a Ferrari. This comes from the Geneva International Motor Show, where Apple announced CarPlay. Ferrari is one of three partner automakers for its launch; the other two are Mercedes-Benz and Volvo. Continue Reading
RAIN News managing editor Brad Hill was questioned about Apple’s CarPlay initiative on the Tech Shift segment of WBEZ’s Afternoon Shift program. WBEZ is a public FM station, and the originator of NPR’s widely-syndicated Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me program. Tech Shift is hosted by Niala Boodhoo. Click to listen. Continue Reading
Registered users comprise everyone who has created a log-in to Pandora’s service, which is required to create a personalized station and hear something. So, presumably, that 250-million number includes anyone who has kicked the tires even just once. About 30% of signups turn into active users. Continue Reading
We were tipped over the weekend by Robert Maccini, who notified RAIN that he had heard an iTunes Radio commercial on a Boston FM station, WKLB. Maccini listened until he heard the ad again, and pounced with a recording device. Click through to hear the live-read commercial. Continue Reading
The Oscars Radio is the perfect weekend station leading up to the Academy Awards on Sunday night. The stream includes presentations and acceptance speeches leading into those songs, like Cuba Gooding’s famous acceptance speech for Jerry Maguire. Continue Reading
Dave Allen, iconic musician and participant in the “Spotify debate,” announced in the Beats Music blog that he has accepted the position of Director, Artist & Music Industry Advocate. “I am back in the music business after 13 years,” Allen enthuses. Continue Reading
The five most-read articles of last week. Is the streaming-music business model fundamentally broken? (This was also our most-linked article.) iTunes Radio and Pandora: who is slaying whom? Lew Dickey (CEO, Cumulus) speaks out about streaming. Shazam starts a record label. More. Continue Reading
In a first-of-its-kind deal, song-recognition company Shazam has partnered with Warner Music Group (WMG) to create a new Shazam-branded music label, and to augment WMG marketing of existing artists with Shazam’s consumer-use data. Continue Reading