Quick Hits: The song of the summer, plus two interviews
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Spotify’s song of the summer; interview with Songza founder; iTunes VP says there’s “homework” to do. Continue Reading
Spotify
App Annie: Pandora and Spotify are among the top five iOS apps by revenue
App Annie always has great insights into mobile business, and the company’s latest report reviews the most popular iOS apps to date. The report has separate lists for global popularity by download and by revenue, with separate lists for games. Pandora took the crown as the highest-grossing iOS app, while Spotify ranked fifth on that chart. Continue Reading
Billboard industry survey finds love for Taylor Swift and Apple, not so much for Tidal
Billboard conducted an anonymous survey of music industry leaders, gathering expert opinions on everything from the sector’s business outlook to favorite artists. The business questions also revealed intriguing insights, including a view of which music companies are the industry darlings and which are not. Continue Reading
Quick Hits: Dr. Dre exclusive; the price of streaming; Spotify targets tour stops
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. TODAY: Apple reveals streaming numbers of Dr. Dre’s exclusive album release; Spotify helps an artist know where to plan tour stops; the price of music subscriptions is examined in the context of what people paid for music in 1999. Continue Reading
Barack Obama on Spotify
The highest office in the U.S. indirectly endorses streaming and is a good “get” for Spotify, which announced today that the White House has placed to summer playlists on the service, purportedly hand-built by the President. Continue Reading
Quick Hits: Spotify songs by tempo; Napster digs at freemium; Forbes and Billboard talk radio outlook
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: New gadget selects Spotify music by tempo; Napster critiques Spotify, Apple; Forbes believes in radio; Billboard reviews the web radio landscape. Continue Reading
Next Big Sound examines streaming trends: Growth, social media, and specialization
Next Big Sound released its summer report, and the focus for this season was streaming and social media. Even though Pandora purchased the music data specialist this spring, the company is still able to provide compelling insight across several streaming platforms. In fact, Next Big Sound has already tracked more than 1 trillion online plays in the first six months of the year. That covers activity from YouTube, Vevo, Vimeo, Spotify, Rdio, SoundCloud, and new owner Pandora. Continue Reading
Rumor Fact(ory): Freemium restrictions still under consideration at Spotify
According to a new report from Digital Music News, Spotify may be reconsidering its free tier approach. Sources have allegedly told the site that Spotify may begin adopting a windowed path, making some music releases only available to paid listeners or only opening it up to free listeners for a short amount of time. The company is reportedly considering several different options for what form that gated material might take. Sources told DMN that multiple of those options could see a rollout in early 2016. Continue Reading
Quick Hits: Beats 1 as radio rival; Spotify as hitmaker;
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. TODAY: Does Beats 1 steal radio’s last advantage? Is Spotify a hitmaker? And U2 went on podcasting to break news. Continue Reading
New partnership brings Beatport exclusives to Spotify
SFX Entertainment has entered into a partnership with Spotify. This new arrangement will bring music and video content from Beatport to Spotify’s streaming service. Brand new Beatport CEO Greg Consiglio said that the company is in the midst of building out new content partnerships with other distribution channels, but Spotify is the only one that will get access to Beatport’s new music exclusives. Continue Reading
Test Drive: Spotify’s newest feature is a weekly personalized mixtape
Spotify has launched a new feature called Discover Weekly. This is a two-hour playlist personalized to each individual listener. The song choices for the Discover Weekly list stem from your particular music taste and what other similar fans are listening to. Spotify is billing it as a custom-made mixtape delivered each Monday morning. So how good are the recommendations? Pretty solid. Continue Reading
Quick Hits: Pandora programmatic; YouTube compared to cable; Spotify’s new playlist
Worthy news items and interesting reads from around the web. Today: Analyzing Pandora programmatic; YouTube is bigger than cable; inside Spotify’s new playlist. Continue Reading