It’s a rising tide. While Pandora, iTunes Radio, and other IP-delivered music services build momentum, Sirius XM continues to disrupt AM/FM’s automotive presence, with enviable subscriber numbers. As Tom Taylor notes in his NOW newsletter this morning, “Sirius XM recently… Continue Reading
RAIN’s Weekend Perspective summarizes the week’s important events for a weekend catch-up, and revives your weary neurons for coming week. DEVICES Two new streaming devices assaulted the traditional home radio. Samsung Shape: First, Samsung introduced its WiFi-connected speaker system called… Continue Reading
Two days ago we noted that iTunes Radio would probably expand its (currently U.S.-only) listening service to Canada, based on a viral spotting of a job listing. Now, Bloomberg reports on discussions with unnamed sources which clarify Apple’s roadmap in… Continue Reading
As noted in Audio4cast, Pandora landed in 8th place in comScore’s measurement of top smartphone app usage for August. This metrics category is different from smartphone audience via the phone’s browser. Some top-15 media properties (like Gmail) might have their… Continue Reading
Rhapsody, one of the oldest listening platforms, a subscription-only pureplay, and lately a beleaguered business wracked with internal changes, has brought new features to its Radio product. “Radio” in this context means playlists. Until now, Rhapsody has offered a suite… 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
Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of Internet Software and Services, and chief of iTunes and iTunes Radio, indicated in a recent interview that streaming Justin Timberlake’s new album a week before its release won’t be the last promotion of its kind.… Continue Reading
Creative curation is Internet radio’s latest programming vogue. Songza, for which “life moment” playlists are the cornerstone of the service’s “Concierge” programming strategy, emblemizes the approach of serving the user in action, furnishing a music stream that matches daypart, activity,… Continue Reading
Media reviews tend to binary considerations — either/or judgments of new products. Accordingly, reviews of iTunes Radio are commonly framed in opposition to Pandora, as in SFGate’s review premise: “Now that iTunes Radio has shipped to millions of iPhone and… Continue Reading
Being a first-mover can be dangerous. No music service is more aware of the perils of pioneering than Rhapsody, the subscription listening platform that has been operating since 2001. CEO Jon Irwin, in his RAIN Summit West 2013 keynote, remarked:… Continue Reading
Internet radio service Songza completed a $4.7M round of private equity funding yesterday, almost exactly two years after receiving $2M in venture funds (as reported in CrunchBase). Yesterday’s commitment will be invested in scaling Songza’s native sponsoring platform, in which… Continue Reading
If you’re an executive who’s trying to prepare your radio station (or other company) for the future, wouldn’t it be great if you could jump into a time machine, travel forward to approximately 2015, see what’s happening, and then come back to the present, so your could prepare your company to be a winner in 2015?
Well, when it comes to the subject of how radio will be used in automobiles in 2015, I believe I can show you a way to do that this weekend!
Here are step-by-step instructions: Continue Reading