William E. Kennard will join the board of directors at Ford Motor Co. effective Jan. 1. He is a former chairman of the FCC, as well as a former U.S. Ambassador to the EU. Before entering the government, Kennard’s career covered the areas of law, telecommunications, and private equity. Continue Reading
Midia Research founder Mark Mulligan analyzes the “freemium” space by comparing YouTube (and its new Music Key subscription service) to Spotify and Pandora. YouTube has changed from a marketing tool to a full-fledged listening destination, the author asserts, and should be modeled more like Pandora than Spotify. Continue Reading
The Electronic Frontier Foundation will have a hearing today with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to argue its case for invalidating key claims of patents that Personal Audio has used to sue podcasters. The group’s legal counsel says that Personal Audio didn’t invent anything new or non-obvious related to podcasting, and thus should not have a patent. Continue Reading
After our review of Slacker’s inventive new app, which represents a meaningful re-launch of the brand and its content focus, we wanted to dig deeper. Jack Isquith, SVP of Strategic Development and Content Programming, joined us on the phone for a chat about his priorities and the thinking behind Slacker’s reinvention. Continue Reading
Ad network TargetSpot announced a partnership with audience measurement company Quantcast, which will allow TargetSpot to more finely identify audience characteristics across its portfolio of streaming audio publishers. The agreement represents an important example of the Big Data movement in online audio, and the increasing expectation of targeted audience segments among advertisers. Continue Reading
Following our recent examination of native advertising growth for streaming audio, we were on the prowl for live campaign examples in podcasts. We found two instances of a podcast campaign by Casper mattresses, and those two examples demonstrate the range of ad-libbing that is possible when a podcast host is responsible for the marketing presentation. Click to listen. Continue Reading
Bose may be positioning itself to move beyond the hardware realm and add a listening service to its catalog. Hypebot has unearthed a job posting for a Senior User Experience Designer: Cloud Music Services at the respected sound company. The description calls for somebody who will “lead design and prototyping of our next generation streaming music platform and ecosystem of products.” According to the post, the ideal candidate would have work experience at one of the many streaming music companies dominating the digital airwaves. Continue Reading
SoundCloud introduced a new feature which makes it easier for account-holders to collect and organize music. Aptly, it is called Collections. It does not add new functionality, but displays a user’s tagged music differently. Highly recommended for long-time SoundCloud music collectors. Continue Reading
TagStation, the company behind NextRadio, released a blog post to close out 2014 by announcing its plans for attending the CES trade show in January, partnering with HD Radio developer iBiquity. In addition, TagStation shared statistics for NextRadio’s progress during 2014. Continue Reading
Beatport has built itself as a digital store for creators and fans of electronic music, but now parent company SFX Entertainment seems poised to add a streaming component. The Beatport website will reportedly have free, ad-supported, on-demand streaming starting early next year, sources told The Wall Street Journal. Continue Reading
Ad-repping firm AdLarge Media and on-demand audio platform AudioBoom have signed a partnership that gives AdLarge exclusive representation of AudioBoom advertising opportunities for its quickly growing U.S. audience, starting in the new year. We spoke to executives from both companies. Continue Reading
Deezer announced the appointment of Beth Murphy as its new chief marketing officer. She will lead the global brand in addition to guiding efforts in product marketing, product management, acquisition, engagement and customer service in the U.S. and worldwide. We asked her about the company’s plays for Stitcher and a full launch of its streaming service in the U.S. Continue Reading