Rhapsody and Napster have reached the 3 million subscriber milestone. It has been a year of fast growth for the streaming services, which announced 2.5 million listeners in February and 2 million listeners last July. Continue Reading
Public radio is often ambitious in its goals for curating and presenting great music, and the latest project to come out of the organization is a delightful response to recent trends favoring both mobile and video. Several venerable public radio stations have joined forces to power a new mobile app that focuses on recordings of live performances. VuHaus is free for both iOS and Android, and it’s definitely worth a look and a listen. Continue Reading
Line Music has officially launched in Japan. It will offer two price tiers, the first costing 500 yen (about $4) a month for 20 hours of streaming. The second tier costs 1,000 yen (about $8) for unlimited listening on the platform. The streaming service is owned by Japan-based messaging company Line, and it also has involvement from Universal Music Japan. Continue Reading
Emmis Communications announced the launch of its second mobile app for music streaming. The app is named Where Hip Hop Lives, and it’s available for iOS. The free version of the app is ad-supported, but it does have a subscription component as well. Continue Reading
CEO Rich Riley said at the start of the year that Shazam would make pushes into more than audio, and to that end, the company has rolled out a new visual component for its mobile app. The software made its reputation for the ability to recognize and identify songs; now it can also scan for an image. What’s Shazam’s end goal in expanding beyond audio? Continue Reading
App Annie released its April 2015 index of the top performing mobile apps in the U.S. Pandora held the top spot for top app by downloads and revenue, followed by Spotify. SoundCloud was fourth by downloads and iHeartRadio was fifth. In terms of revenue, Beats Music was the No. 3 app, while Rhapsody secured the No. 6 place. Continue Reading
As rumored in December, Japan-based messaging app Line has launched a Line Music service for a trial in Thailand. The service is available within Line’s flagship mobile software as an in-app purchase for 60 Baht (about $1.80) per month. The new platform will let users listen to music and share songs with friends either in individual or group chats. Continue Reading
National Public Radio announced the debut of the NPR One Developer Center. This move by the media organization opens up its API to outside developers and will allow them to create versions of the mobile NPR program for additional platforms. It’s an early step in making its personalized news service, which launched last summer, accessible to more listeners. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Analyzing streaming revenues against GDP; SoundScan will include Bandzoogle sales; Apple’s redesigned mobile Music app. Continue Reading
Amazon has expanded its Prime Music app on the Android operating system to include its new stations feature. The app now includes hundreds of Pandora-style lean-back listening channels without advertisements. Continue Reading
The growing use of smartphones for managing all aspects of digital life is a pertinent issue for the entire audio industry. A newly-released study from the Pew Research Center defines the smartphone usage footprint across age groups, and tracks how music/podcasts are consumed. Continue Reading
GlobalWebIndex released research into the online behavior of teenagers. The participants covered 16- to 19-year old Internet users in 32 different countries worldwide. Entertainment is a top online activity for this age group, with 60% reporting that they had listened to music on a streaming service in the past month. Continue Reading