Beats Music is reportedly signing up subscribers at a slower pace than hoped. Beats is taking one costly step to streamline the sign-up process: the service now allows users to sign up within the iPhone and iPad apps. By acceding to Apple’s business structure, Beats Music appears willing to swallow a 30% reduction in some of its subscription revenue. Continue Reading
Addressing this issue should be a major concern for AM/FM broadcasters, since hugely-long spot breaks are cited regularly, at least anecdotally, as a reason consumer are spending less hours per week with broadcast radio and more hours per week with satellite and Internet radio each year. RAIN founder Kurt Hanson offers ideas. Continue Reading
Last month we reported the start of Milk Music, Samsung’s service targeted to Samsung phone users only. Milk Music launched with the most streamlined possible sign-up process: None. Now, a captured (leaked?) screenshot of a Samsung internal marketing graphic indicates that the ground is being laid for Milk’s next stage. Continue Reading
Record Store Day might seem to be an anachronism to some, but the annual event (held this past Saturday) is fun, well-attended, good for the stores, and nice promotion for many musicians and bands. For me, it’s all about the memories. For many years I lived in Princeton, NJ, home of a famous independent music store. Continue Reading
Stitcher, a leading podcast-listening app, raised $3-million dollars in new funding, according to CrunchBase. VentureBeat points to an SEC filing indicating that Stitcher’s offering to venture capitalists is $5.1-million, of which $3-million was sold. $2.1-million is “Remaining to be Sold,” according to the filing. Continue Reading
Introducing Internet Radio REWIND, an audio recap of the week. This weekly program is a quick (six minutes) and concise catch-up of the week’s top stories. Click the Play button and be ready for the coming week. this week: Bette Midler, Spotify and Sprint, Pandora’s latest lawsuit, Rdio’s Brazilian blockbuster, and Pono Music. Continue Reading
Sonos, market leader in the WiFi-speaker space, announced on its blog an important product update, eliminating the requirement to plug a Sonos component directly into the home’s wireless router. The upshot for new buyers will be a slightly less expensive complete system. For existing users, the benefit will be better speaker placement. Continue Reading
An awaited radio-listening app that pulls together most or all Canadian terrestrial station streams will be launched sometime this spring. Radioplayer Canada is a joint venture of SparkNet, a digital solutions provider for Canadian radio, and audience measurement firm BBM Analytics. Continue Reading
Ad solution provider AdsWizz has signed a partnership agreement with leanStream, a streaming solution provider, to help monetize content streams playing on the leanStream platform. The agreement is the latest in a series of alliances for AdsWizz, which now provides its audio-ad technology to 27 content delivery networks (CDNs). Continue Reading
Music publication Pitchfork has produced a dazzling feature called Station to Station: The Past, Present, and Future of Streaming Music. It is a worthwhile read for anyone in the field, or interested in the evolution of music listening — if you can figure out how to read it. Continue Reading
The world’s biggest record label groups have filed a lawsuit against Pandora in an attempt to recoup royalties for music recorded before 1972, which is not protected by U.S. copyright law. The legal question hinges on a loophole in the U.S. Copyright Act. the suit is filed in New York State. Continue Reading
In a quadrennial update of rules which regulate how many stations a radio or TV company can own in a local market, the FCC rejected arguments that Internet radio creates meaningful local competition, and sustained the existing ruling of eight same-owned stations per market. Continue Reading