RAIN News has learned that NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have agreed to a 17% music licensing rate increase for the 2016-2020 royalty period. The new rate anchors an agreement between the nonprofit public media outlets and SoundExchange, the royalty collection and distribution entity representing artists and record labels to webcasters. Continue Reading
Rhapsody launched a new feature today called Rhapsody audio cards that allows more than 30 million songs to be embedded and heard in full on Twitter. The new development is designed to allow listening to its catalog without ever leaving the social media app. Continue Reading
Helen Boaden, director of radio at the BBC, spoke today at the RadioDays Europe Festival about the media icon’s efforts to reinvent its broadcast presence to reflect new technologies and changing consumer preferences. The BBC is working to “reinvent radio for the Internet age” with an online audio service. Continue Reading
Patreon, a crowdfunding site based on the idea of classical patronage, has acquired Subbable, a fellow crowdfunding service. Subbable was founded by Hank and John Green, YouTube personalities known as the Vlogbrothers. While most financial terms of the deal were not revealed, Patreon will be matching migrating pledges up to $100,000. Continue Reading
Mike Agovino, formerly COO of Triton Digital, has pivoted quickly into a new role as Executive Vice Chairman of PodcastOne. As we reported yesterday, Agovino left Triton in the wake of its acquisition by Vector Capital. Continue Reading
Guest columnist James Cridland Weekly Links, a new column on RAIN News. A new book, changes to BBC streaming, DAB in Australia, and much more. Continue Reading
RAIN News founding editor Kurt Hanson is in Milan for Radiodays Europe 2015. This is the first of his bulletins, with photos. Continue Reading
Six months after its introduction by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Digital Audio Ad Serving Template (DAAST) is in its adoption phase. “Industry adoption of DAAST enables digital audio ads to be easily run and tracked in a consistent manner across publishers, similar to other digital marketing mediums,” said Scott Cunningham, Senior Vice President, IAB, and General Manager of the IAB Technology Lab. Continue Reading
SoundExchange has reached an agreement with NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that sets royalty rates for webcasting for the next five years. In doing this, both parties shortcut the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) rate-setting process which started last year, and will conclude in December when the CRB announces new webcaster music licensing rates for 2016-2020. Continue Reading
As we reported this morning, Vector Capital has acquired Triton Digital. We spoke with Triton President and CEO Neal Schore, to get context around the new business structure. He shared to background and reason for the ownership change, and addressed staff changes. Continue Reading
Roger Lanctot is Associate Director of Strategy Analytics, and a thought leader in the connected-car space. In this guest article, he starts by noting that GM removed HD Radio from five 2015 car models, and nobody seemed to care. “HD Radio is poised to realize its full potential to transform the listening and content integration experience in the car. But work remains to be done and questions of signal quality must be resolved. Recent events suggest that consumers and (at least one) car maker are in danger of tuning out.”
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Universal Music Group has partnered with Mondia Media for the launch of a white-label mobile music service. According to the press release, Mondia Mix is a playlist-based listening platform for iOS and Android that’s aimed at mobile operators interested in providing entry-level streaming to their customers. Continue Reading