Serial entrepreneur Brad Smith, who founded podcast hosting platform Simplecast, has been named Head of Podcast Products for SiriusXM, effective immediately, the company tells RAIN. Smith will manage a team responsible for SiriusXM’s podcast product strategy across all of its owned platforms – including SiriusXM, Pandora, and Stitcher. Continue Reading
June is Black History Month, siriusXM is marshalling its sprawling inventory of audio platforms in a combined celebration and promotion. The company, along with its Pandora and Stitcher subsidiaries, announced the launch of three exclusive limited-engagement channels, a groundbreaking original podcast, and specialty music programming. Continue Reading
TikTok Radio is a headline new channel coming to SiriusXM, expanding the reach of the shortform video platform’s influence on the music industry. SiriusXM calls the new channel “groundbreaking,” and promises other collaborations across the Sirius/Pandora audio offerings. Other extensions of TikTok music already appear on Sirius-owned Pandora. Continue Reading
Today audio juggernaut SiriusXM is announcing the merger of three internal sales divisions attached to Sirius, Pandora, and Stitcher. Unifying the three ad sales entities creates a marketplace of 150-million listeners across a constellation of satellite programming, lean-back streaming music, and podcasting. The newly combined unit is called SXM Media. Continue Reading
In Q1 2021, SiriusXM added 126,000 net subscribers. Revenue grew 5% from a year ago. Net income was $219-million. Company execs answered questions about podcast subscriptions, and Pandora performance. Continue Reading
Emulating Spotify and The New York Times, and furthering an ongoing era of podcast consolidation, SiriusXM has acquired 99% Invisible Inc., the owner of the venerable 99% Invisible podcast and its spinoffs. The podcast was launched by host Roman Mars in 2010, which could be considered the Middle Ages of podcasting — an era between the rosy founding days of a new media category and the modern resurgence which started with NPR’s Serial in 2014. Click for details. Continue Reading
Digital audio advertising company AdsWizz is announcing having reached the milestone of one billion monthly downloads. The company is paired with podcast host Simplecast, via separate acquisitions by parent entity Sirius XM. Continue Reading
As online gaming grows to huge proportions, ad tech company Audiomob has launched audio ads for mobile games, and a demand-side platform (DSP) for setting up campaigns. Related to the entwining of gaming and audio, Pandora builds a collection of videogaming playlists. Continue Reading
Triton Digital’s Streaming Metrics monthly ranker of measured streaming entities is out for January streaming, and shows iHeartRadio in its newly established leading position, but with a dip over the past two months. NPR, meanwhile, approached 100,000 Average Active Sessions (AAS), Triton’s measurement of average simultaneous streams. Click through for the chart. Continue Reading
Triton Digital’s Webcast Metrics monthly ranker of measured streaming entities turned a corner in the November data, at least for the time being. “Pandora reevaluates their third-party data partnerships as part of an ongoing process, and are not currently measured by Triton’s Webcast Metrics,” Triton informs RAIN. The sudden absence of Pandora’s supremacy in the chart, which RAIN has been caretaking since September 2009, creates room below for streaming radio to differentiate its groups. Click through for details, history, and charts. Continue Reading
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) has received $424-million in royalties from Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Google, Pandora, and 15 other streaming entities from Aspiro to Xandrie. With funds in hand, the MLC starts its US government mandate to accurately distribute payments to songwriters, composers, and music publishers. Click for the list streaming services by dollar amount. Continue Reading
In a consumer research study conducted by Edison Research in October and released today, Pandora reveals key learnings about how the work-from-home (WFH) population listens to streaming audio, and whether it affects their concentration and productivity. Click through for details. Continue Reading