Deezer announced an expansion into Israel. The company’s free tier and its Premium+ options will be available at launch, as well as a Family plan. The company expects to roll out Deezer HiFi in the coming months. Continue Reading
Another audio creator is making a second leap to television. Night Vale Presents has carved out a niche in telling stories about the spooky and supernatural. FX is working with Sony Pictures Television to create a TV series based on the company’s fictional radio show Welcome to Night Vale. Continue Reading
Kevin Brown is departing Spotify, where he is head of artist and label services UK and international, at the end of the year. He first joined Spotify in 2013 and is one of the most senior industry-facing leaders at the company. During his tenure, Brown helped improve relationships between the company and artists. Continue Reading
Pandora has hired a new chief marketing officer. Aimée Lapic will step into the role beginning December 13. Lapic will spearhead digital, social, and mobile marketing initiatives for the online audio company, in addition to leading consumer brand strategy, market positioning, performance-based marketing, and partnership marketing for Pandora. Continue Reading
In a RAIN webinar last August, Melbourne-based podcast hosting and technology company Omny Studio announced a technology achievement that seemed either revolutionary or implausible, depending on one’s perspective. Omny claimed to offer podccast listening data captured from Apple’s Podcasts app. Today, prompted by the imminent release of Apple’s own podcast analytics, Omny has unfurled a description of its previously secret method. Continue Reading
The BBC has rolled out its first full voice app, creating Amazon Alexa skills for all of its radio stations and podcasts. The skills include controls such as play, pause, and resume. This move expands the broadcaster’s content available on devices running Amazon’s voice assistant platform. Continue Reading
Nielsen has published a new study into the effectiveness of podcast sponsorships and advertisements. The purpose was to measure “brand lift” across different measures, with a focus on comparing to video pre-roll ad effectiveness. Continue Reading
Amplifi Media CEO Steve Goldstein shares a blog post examining trends among the types of shows that are topping the podcast charts. Lots of insights and analytics about popular shows. Continue Reading
As Facebook assembled a sizable music team, the expectation was that the social network might apply that expertise to video content. The company does appear to be following that plan, with the addition of 1,000 free audio tracks to the Facebook Sound Collection that can be used as background for videos. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s Future of Radio is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: Subscription radio for nursing homes in Australia. Radio’s earliest tweeters. Recognition for Global. Continue Reading
Over the weekend TechCrunch broke news from undisclosed sources in Apple that the tech giant was close to acquiring market-leading music-ID platform Shazam — Apple confirmed the acquisition this morning. The enormously popular and influential Shazam has historically taken the role of Switzerland, standing in the midst of Spotify, Napster, Apple Music and others, offering to funnel ID’d songs to the user’s preferred listening platform. That could change. Continue Reading
Spotify and Tencent Music Entertainment Group announced that they will acquire minority stakes in each other. Tencent Holdings, which owns a majority stake of Tencent Music Entertainment, is also making a separate investment in Spotify and will own a minority stake. This development hit the rumor mill last week. Continue Reading