Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant continues to receive new partnerships and new features. One of the latest developments for the platform is a Song ID tool that lets the AI voice take on the role of a radio DJ. Amazon has also entered a partnership with Ticketmaster to allow sales of tickets through the voice AI. Continue Reading
Jonathan Prince has departed Spotify. Prince has been in the dual posts vice president, head of marketplace and content policy and vice president, global head of communications and public policy for the streaming service since 2014. Continue Reading
Slate has appointed a new editor in chief to oversee both its text and audio operations. Jared Hohlt will take over at the helm of the publication. He previously spent 18 years with New York magazine and held multiple roles over those nearly two decades. Continue Reading
Spotify debuted a deal with Samsung in August 2018, and that partnership has already grown. The parties announced that users will see “frictionless access” on more Samsung mobile devices. Beginning today, millions of new Samsung mobile devices will come with Spotify pre-installed. Continue Reading
German music industry body BVMI has released new figures for 2018, marking the first time that streaming generated more money than CDs. Total revenue for the year dipped 0.4% to €1.58 billion ($1.78 billion) Continue Reading
Kobalt Music Group is in the process of raising its largest funding round yet. KMG is the parent organization behind Kobalt Music Publishing, Kobalt Neighbouring Rights, recorded music operation AWAL and collection society AMRA. Continue Reading
The Copyright Royalty Board rates set for 2018 through 2022 are soon to face a legal challenge. A group of streaming and technology platforms — including Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon — filed notices that they intend to appeal the mechanical statutory licensing rates for that period. Continue Reading
Dubset is quietly collecting a growing roster of labels and libraries for its platform for quickly licensing compositions to use in remixes and DJ playlists. The latest addition is Warner Music Group, which is now one of the biggest labels to ink a partnership with the company. Continue Reading
SoundCloud is broadening its relationship with DAX, Global’s digital audio advertising arm. The parties are expanding their existing exclusive sales agreement to include Canada as a second market. Continue Reading
Webcast listening in November was 8% higher than the year-ago period, as Spotify widened its upward trend advantage compared to Pandora. This according to Triton Digital’s Top-20 Ranker, a monthly report based on Triton’s Webcast Metrics streaming measurement technology. Continue Reading
The Entertainment Retailers Association has released its annual report, and the document shows a snapshot of how the UK has shifted into a subscription-driven economy for digital entertainment. Paid music subscriptions generated revenue of £829 million in 2018. Continue Reading
Voicebot.ai and Voicify released a new survey of smart speaker ownership in the United States. The results found that as of January 2019, 66.4 million people in the country owned the devices. That total marked a rise of 39.8% in one year. Continue Reading