Apple Music has launched a fund to help insure artists get paid during the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform is creating a $50 million advance royalty fund for paying artists through independent record labels. Continue Reading
We are gratified to see Stitcher’s blog post describing a session in RAIN’s 4th Annual Podcast Business Summit. The session was called, “Getting Podcast Measurement Right,” and was moderated by Stitcher Chief Revenue Officer Sarah van Mosel. Her panelists were… Continue Reading
Victoria Campoamor has joined Spotify as the streaming service’s new senior director of content operations and services. Prior to this position, she spent several years in posts with YouTube and Google. Continue Reading
iHeartMedia announced that it has extended its deal with Aaron Mahnke. The multi-year deal will see the author and podcast creator continue his exclusive partnership with the iHeartPodcast Network. In addition to work with Mahnke, the partnership will see the addition of five new podcasts to feature new talents. Continue Reading
We thought it might be interesting to compare how three publicly traded audio stocks have fared in the COVID-19 period, for one month starting in early March. Sirius XM has weathered the coronavirus storm better than iHeartMedia and Spotify, but even so the drop is about 30%. Continue Reading
As Australians worked from home during much of march, radio group Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) worked up some streaming metrics for the month. This report covers live radio streaming, smart speaker listening, and podcast plays. All streaming metrics in this report are up in double digit percentages. Continue Reading
Audioboom reported its first-quarter financials. The podcast company reported $6.4 million (£5.2 million) in revenue for the first three months of 2020, a jump of 40% from the year-ago period. The increase was largely due to a corresponding spike in brand advertiser count. Continue Reading
Triton Digital has released its LATAM Podcast Report. The latest chart covers February 17 through March 15. For that period, the top 100 podcasts generated 19.4 million downloads. Continue Reading
The coronavirus pandemic has already had an impact on music consumption and performance around the world. Performing rights organization ASCAP is the latest company to share changes as a result of the disease. President and Chairman Paul Williams told members in an email that the organization is postponing its scheduled April 6 payments to April 28. Continue Reading
Canalys has published its 2020 outlook for the Internet-of-things industry. It projected that smart speakers, smart personal audio devices, and wearable bands would see a 9.8% increase in shipments for a total of 718 million units during the year. Smart speakers are forecast to see just 1.5% year-on-year growth. Continue Reading
Blubrry has shared data from its podcast platform, offering a look at how its audiences are responding to the coronavirus pandemic. In this blog post, it only shared figures for aggregate number of downloads. Continue Reading
Podtrac has released its ranking of the top podcast publishers for February 2020. A change is afoot — Podtrac has added five more places to this ranking, making it a top-20 list. Also, the RAIN Remix, to gain insight about how the audience, and streams/downloads, are distributed across number of shows for each publisher. It reshuffles the list considerably. Continue Reading