For some time now, the music industry has been tracking trends of increased revenue from streaming as income from physical formats and downloads wanes. The RIAA H1 2017 data shows that the first half of this year continued those trajectories. Streaming secured a 62% share of the first-half revenues and total streaming revenue for the period was $2.5 billion. Continue Reading
Guest columnist Mark Ramsey gets serious about listening trends in radio and which elements of recent data are cause for concern. Part one of two. Continue Reading
Guest columnist Mark Ramsey gets serious about listening trends in radio and which elements of recent data are cause for concern. Second in a two-part series. Continue Reading
Panoply Media has signed with agency WME, a deal that could see the company’s podcasts adapted into movies, television shows, and live events. Panoply has several popular shows under its creation, hosting, and monetization umbrella, including Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History. The Hollywood Reporter first shared this development. Continue Reading
reVolver Podcasts announced a new partnership with Univision around the creation of exclusive content for Spanish-language and multicultural listeners. Under this deal, the reVolver Studios division will create custom audio content for Universal that leverages the company’s brands and talent. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s Future of Radio is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: Videos up from the Next Radio event, plus other insights from around the radio/audio industry. Continue Reading
Crowdfunding platform Patreon has closed a series C funding round of $60 million, bringing its total raised to $107 million. The new financing will go toward hiring and scaling growth for the patronage-based platform for supporting creative projects by artists, musicians, performers, and, noteworthy for RAIN readers, podcasters. Continue Reading
The IFPI has released a new report focused on the consumer music industry, and the analysis finds continued traction for streaming as a listening format worldwide. The results showed that 45% of listeners are engaged in licensed audio streaming, up from 37% last year. Continue Reading
Pandora has rolled out its Video Plus ad product to all advertisers. This option means that brands only pay when users watch 15 seconds of a video ad. In exchange, the viewer temporarily unlocks listening features that would typically be available only for Pandora Plus or Pandora Premium subscribers. Continue Reading
Triton Digital announced another new client for its enterprise podcast management solution. Neuhoff Communications has signed on to power its on-demand content strategy with the platform from Triton and Omny Studio. Under this deal, Neuhoff will use Omny’s podcast platform for capturing, editing, and distributing its on-demand content. Continue Reading
Podtrac has posted its podcast rankings for August 2017. Most of the top 20 shows are familiar to regular readers of this monthly chart, but the August installment does show some changes worth noting. Continue Reading
We learn from Billboard that Ty Roberts, Chief Technology Officer of Universal Music Group (UMG) has left the company after a little more than a year. Ty Roberts’ sideways career move from Gracenote to Universal was seen by many as a significant signal that the music industry could, to some extent, reinvent itself as a technology industry — or at least a tech-flriendly, tech-fluent one. Continue Reading