As part of its acquisition, Apple has allegedly let go of some Beats employees who were in redundant roles. Reports suggested that Beats Electronics would lose 200 jobs, although the impact on the streaming side of the business, Beats Music, was not clear. Apple’s rep later gave clarification about the rumored job cuts. Continue Reading
After 17 years at Warner Music Group, Stephen Bryan has been appointed the new senior vice president of business development and strategy for SoundCloud. “I’ve always felt a deep passion to navigate this incredible transition to digital platforms,” he said. “I think that change will accelerate in the near future, and a company like SoundCloud enables me to continue that.” He enters a company undergoing growth, and growing pains. Continue Reading
On Monday we reported a possible sale of Swell Radio to Apple for $30-million dollars, citing unnamed sources talking to Re/code. That rumor has been substantiated now by thoday’s shutdown of the Swell site. The iOS app fails to connect to Swell servers, except for a brief audio message thanking listeners for using Swell. Continue Reading
Internet radio service Radionomy announced today that its platform of independent stations have been added to Sonos, the wireless speaker system. Sonos represents an important new distribution angle for Radionomy, and is also a win for Radionomy’s station owners, and Sonos users. Continue Reading
Ryan Farish is an electronic-music composer and producer, a pioneer of the EDM (Electronic Dance Music) genre which is surging in popularity, and a Grammy-nominated songwriter. He coined the defining sub-genre of his music as Positive Chillout, a category now in use by other musicians.
Farish will be featured onstage at RAIN Summit Indy, September 9 in Indianapolis, in a panel titled “EDM: Streaming a New Path to Success.” In anticipation, RAIN spoke with Ryan Farish by phone, asking about how his star career unfolded without the traditional leverage of broadcast radio or a major-label deal. Continue Reading
RAIN founding editor Kurt Hanson reports from Tokyo, where he surveyed the tech, culture, and audio landscapes. This is his third illustrated report — including beer gardens, one-price menus, and their business implications. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. Today — Google buys a raft of domain names that might indicate a name for its new service; IMMF publishes best practices for the digital music industry; U.S.-based Hindi-music service Saavn raising capital. Continue Reading
Things are looking pretty good for Sirius XM following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said revenue increased 10 percent, surpassing $1 billion. Net income for the period was $120 million, and the 2 cents per share earnings met the estimates set by Thomson Reuters analysts. Continue Reading
On April 30, 2012, Rick O’Dell was fed up. WLFM in Chicago switched away from the Smooth Jazz format (to Alt Rock), leaving the city’s terrestrial listeners without a station for that shiny genre. It had happened before, in 2009, when Clear Channel’s WNUA abandoned Smooth Jazz for Spanish-language programming. O’Dell saw an opportunity, and started a localized Smooth Jazz Internet-only station. Continue Reading
RAIN founding editor Kurt Hanson just returned from a trip to Tokyo, where he surveyed the tech, culture, and audio landscapes. This is his second illustrated report. Continue Reading
Guest columnist James Cridland looks at NPR One, a new mobile app from National Public Radio. while U.K.-based Cridland admires the app’s features, he wishes for something similar from the BBC, which would inject local content for British users. Continue Reading
adStream is a journal of ad-stalking and interesting commercial sightings in online audio services. In Pandora, Promoted Stations are sponsored playlists branded by advertisers, and co-created with Pandora’s curation experts. The program launched in May with several advertising partners, but the sponsored stations are difficult to find. We found one. Continue Reading