It has been a roiling 7 days in the Internet-enabled home speaker category. Nearly simultaneous with the launches of Samsung Shape (RAIN coverage here) and the Bose SoundTouch (RAIN coverage here), legacy WiFi-speaker company Sonos releases a low-cost addition to its… Continue Reading
The 2014 Mazda3 (which we must say, although we are not in the automotive reporting business, is the most drop-dead beautiful economy car around) has entered showrooms as the first Mazda model equipped with Clear Channel’s Total Traffic HD Network… Continue Reading
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
Video: NME Magazine took a video camera to young musicians in the U.K. to ask them, bluntly, whether Spotify is evil. (Watch it here.) The answers were (perhaps politely) all variations on the theme of “No.” Musicians (at least, the… Continue Reading
To celebrate its fifth birthday this week, Spotify posted an infographic of intriguing usage statistics. A million years of streaming in five years of operation — 200,000 years per year, 17,000 years per month — is fun to ponder. One… Continue Reading
Mere days after Samsung launched its Wave WiFi-controlled speaker system (RAIN coverage here), with Pandora and TuneIn onboard as presets, Bose brings to market a similar product — but with differentiating features that more clearly position it, and the category,… Continue Reading
Connoisseurs of electronica find no better pool in which to dive deeply and slake their unquenchable thirst than DI (Digitally Imported) Radio. (www.di.fm) Started in 1999, when founder Ari Shohat began streaming his favorite music from a college dorm room, DI now presents 55 channels of finely categorized, human-curated electronic music. No selection algorithms are crawling around DI. An emphasis on refined quality is reflected not only in the listening music streams, but also in the darkly atmospheric product design (web and most mobile systems), and the sonic level of its high-bitrate streams. read Continue Reading
South of the border: After a recent expansion of its streaming and cloud-serving music service to a half dozen European countries earlier this month (covered in RAIN here), the irregularly named Google Play Music All Access is now accessible in… Continue Reading
A venerable Internet radio station, Radio Paradise (www.radioparadise.com) is a perfect example of trusted human curation in the independent music streaming space. Operated as a cottage business since 2000 by Bill and Rebecca Goldsmith, the Radio Paradise studio is located… Continue Reading
The cost of content is a shared issue in terrestrial, webcast, and pureplay balance sheets. Music licensing costs come as a patchwork of statutory and negotiated agreements. Stakeholders on the music content side include composers, performers, and labels. Three organizations… Continue Reading