Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Deezer’s CEO shared his vision for the future and streaming success. An ESPN exec detailed the sports network’s audio strategy. The upcoming Wolverine scripted podcast gets a trailer. Continue Reading
Spotify has changed how it works with several third-party speakers and receivers, meaning some customers may be experiencing a break in service. Spotify Connect is no longer integrated in the same way with some speakers and audio products from Bang & Olufsen, Denon, Dynaudio, Logitech, Marantz, NAD, Onkyo, Philips, Pioneer, Teufel, and Yamaha. Continue Reading
Austria posted 6.1% growth in its music market during 2017, reaching a total of 145.4 million euros. Streaming revenue grew 86% to 32.6 million euros. According to the IFPI Austria, streaming was the main driver of the country’s music growth last year. Continue Reading
Apple’s purchase of Shazam is getting some additional scrutiny in the EU. The European Commission announced that it has accepted requests from multiple nations to review the proposed acquisition. Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden sent the requests. Continue Reading
A three-person podcast agency called The Podcast Exchange (TPX) has launched in Canada, with the mission of connecting podcasts with advertisers. The company stands in the middle ground between podcast publishers and marketers, and intends to better fertilize that middle ground by matching content to advertising. Continue Reading
Podcast company RadioPublic has adopted a new service for show creators to get paid for their work. For podcasts that participate, RadioPublic will sell ads to bookend episodes, then pay the show creators a set rate for listens on its Android and iOS apps. The current pay is $20 per thousand listens. Continue Reading
After a delay, Apple has released its first entry into the smart speaker space. Reviews are now out for the Apple HomePod, and there’s a large amount of consensus about the device’s strengths and weaknesses. Continue Reading
Mixcloud has hired Joe Danvers-McCabe to join the music company as its senior product manager. In this role, he will oversee digital products and develop Mixcloud’s presence in long-form audio. Mixcloud’s platform specializes in streaming audio of DJ sets, mix tapes, and radio shows. Continue Reading
True crime podcasting is still having its pop culture moment, which means it’s ripe for the spoofing. Sketch show Portlandia made its own on-point send-up of the familiar show style, and now The Onion is getting in on the act. The humor website has released the first episode of A Very Fatal Murder. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s Future of Radio is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: Confirmation that young people do indeed listen to radio. Royalty rates rising for steaming music. Continue Reading
Spotify is known for its vast stores of metadata, but that information is usually invisible for listeners. Arielle Vaniderstine, a developer advocate engineer at Spotify, has made a new tool available called Nelson that puts the streaming service’s curation controls in your hands. Continue Reading
When Pandora announced the Dynamic Audio ad product last February, the idea was to create a targeting technology that could personalize audio marketing to the listener to an unusually individual degree. The launch partner for that development venture was British ad company A Million Ads. Now, the two companies are starting to roll out the result of that work, on a testing basis with two advertisers. Continue Reading