The British Phonographic Industry released half-year data about music sales in the UK. The report showed that there have been 11.5 billion tracks played in the first six months of 2015, compared with 14.8 billion plays in all of 2014. Dedicated audio streaming services see about 480 million streams a week. Stream Equivalent Album consumption for the first half was 11.49 million, up 79.5% from the year-ago period. Continue Reading
Spotify has acquired Seed Scientific, adding to its cadre of big data capabilities. Under the new ownership, Seed Scientific will focus on analyzing the interactions artists, listeners, and brands have with the streaming platform. It will be the basis of a new Advanced Analytics division at Spotify, led by Seed’s founder and CEO Adam Bly. Continue Reading
YouTube launched a new set of analytics called Music Insights specifically for musicians. The participating artists can use Music Insights to view engagement information, including their most popular songs and the locations where they have the largest number of fans. It also shares aggregated view counts, which include fan-uploaded videos using that artist’s songs as well as views of videos on the performer’s own channel. Continue Reading
Apple seems to have made another musical purchase, this one with a focus on data. According to MusicAlly, UK media data startup Semetric changed its registered address to the same one as Apple Europe. The company also appears to have appointed Apple’s vice president of corporate law as a director in October. Financial details have not been formally disclosed, but the deal has been pegged at about $50 million. Continue Reading
Nordic nations have 8 million streaming music users. That’s one of the takeaways from a survey conducted by the Polaris Nordic Alliance, a coalition of music collecting societies. The poll covered the roughly 17.8 million Internet users between the ages of 15 and 65 in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. Continue Reading
The British Phonographic Industry group reported that UK listeners have streamed 10.2 billion tracks to date this year, almost double the 5.4 billion tracks streamed last year in the same period. People are listening to tunes more than 300 million times each week. Continue Reading
Mark Kassof shared data from a recent survey about the attitudes of teenagers toward FM radio. The 506 online surveys of respondents aged 13 to 20 revealed that only 7% listened to FM radio the most for music. Even online streams of terrestrial stations had limited reach. Just 16% of respondents said they listened to online radio station streams often, while 31% said the did so sometimes. Twenty percent hardly ever listened and 26% have never done so. Smartphone apps for AM and FM radio stations also had limited reach: 49% have never listened on those services. Continue Reading
Following its purchase of the platform in July, Google has revamped Songza’s terms of service. Songza members are required to agree to the new ToS from Google and its privacy policy, as well as agree to transfer their personal information from Songza to Google. Users who don’t agree to the Google terms will not be able to log in to their old accounts. Continue Reading
Inside Radio reported new diary-based research indicating that AM/FM radio occupies at least two-thirds of audio minutes heard across generational divides. The study is branded by USA TouchPoints, a metered-behavior service launched in 2011 under the wing of the Media… Continue Reading