Chinese conglomerate Tencent announced a merger between its QQ Music unit and China Music Corp. This joint entity will run three of China’s streaming music services: QQ Music, Kugou, and Kuwo. Continue Reading
Less than a year after unveiling a major iOS redesign, Vevo is sprucing things up again. Whereas the November updates focused on aesthetics, the new changes center on discovery tools. I explored the changes on iOS. Continue Reading
NPR is coming to iHeartRadio. According to a new deal between the public radio organization and iHeartMedia, more than 260 NPR member stations will have the opportunity to stream their live news and talk programming on iHeartRadio. Continue Reading
Rhapsody has completed its rebranding, and is now officially Napster in all markets. The rename won’t impact any listener playlists or history, but it does come with a redesigned home screen and some other discovery tools. Continue Reading
Guest columnist Glenn Peoples observes that AM/FM is required to pay the music industry only one of two performance royalties, unlike streaming radio which is required to pay both songwriters and labels. He asserts that every point of market share which moves from broadcast radio to Pandora is worth $60-million dollars of revenue to labels and artists. Continue Reading
ASCAP has relaunched its public repertory database ACE following a redesign. The changes are aimed at making the platform more informative and easier to use. ACE originally made the licensable share info public in November 2015. Continue Reading
China has long been a puzzle for the music industry, especially with recent developments in streaming and subscription platforms. A survey by Tencent Penguin Intelligence found that only about 10% of respondents were subscribed to a music service. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. Today: the “Dashboard Era” of the music industry requires greater reliance on streaming data. Also, what did radio’s digital directors think of last week’s Podcast Movement? Continue Reading
Sonos has opened its first physical retail location in New York City’s tony Soho neighborhood. The store places a high value on creating listening environments to best showcase its speaker products. In addition to the usual shelves of merchandise, the store has seven listening rooms designed to look like real rooms in houses. Continue Reading
Spotify is a hit with Mexican listeners, according to data from The Competitive Intelligence Unit. More than 60% of Mexicans who use streaming platforms listen to Spotify. The next closest service is Google Play at just 12.3%. Continue Reading
Omnifone’s business and assets are being purchased by an unknown party. The joint administrators accepted a bid of $10 million from a U.S. source, but the document did not disclose a name. Continue Reading
Google piracy report 2016 music has released its annual piracy report. The analysis highlights YouTube’s role both with the still-growing creator community and to the music industry. It is also well-timed as a response to the label and artist critiques that YouTube doesn’t do enough for the industry. Continue Reading