A new coalition called Digital Music Europe will bring together several streaming music platforms and other digital music companies to represent their interests in the EU government. Deezer CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht will be the group’s president and Spotify Director of EU Regulatory Affairs Olivia Regnier will be the chairman. Continue Reading
Triton Digital has released its Top 20 Ranker of the best-performing digital audio publishers and networks for August 2017. Due to Veteran’s Day and post-Summit travel, RAIN News’ usual complete coverage and historical trendline of the latest monthly results will be posted on Monday. Continue Reading
Pandora has opened up its audience targeting capabilities to include connected home segments. The audio company’s connected home app is currently built into more than 2,000 devices. Advertisers can apply the Pandora audience segments on audio ads that run specifically on voice-enabled devices. Continue Reading
Amazon has rolled out its Echo smart speaker line in Japan. The Amazon Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Dot are now available by invitation in the country. The devices will begin shipping in Japan next week. Continue Reading
Today’s Test Drive explores a tech niche that has been getting lots of buzz lately: podcast discovery. With the audio format on the rise in cultural cache and audience numbers, it makes sense that new properties would emerge to offer additional services to listeners. One of these is Podchaser, a podcast discovery tool currently in open beta and has more than 18 million podcast episodes. The theory of a massive podcast database that’s searchable and filterable is an admirable one, but Podchaser still has some big wrinkles to iron out. Continue Reading
Blubrry, a directory and community for podcasters, announced that it has acquired Cast Feed Validator, an RSS feed validator for podcasts. According to the press release, Blubrry expects the deal to lead to more consistency for podcasters, improved site up-times, and hardware upgrades. Continue Reading
Google Assistant is getting its own song recognition software. The technology was first available on the Pixel smartphones last month, but it is now rolling out to all other Android mobile devices. Continue Reading
Spotify has shared a report investigating the range of music its members listen to on the streaming service. Using its own internal data, the company said that Spotify listeners are hearing 37% more artists than they were in 2014. That’s an increase from nearly 30 artists streamed per week to about 41 artists streamed per week. Continue Reading
E.W. Scripps hosted its earnings call for the third quarter of 2017, which included updates for podcasting business Midroll Media. The media company posted revenue of $216 million, down from $233 million in the year-ago period. Digital revenue, which includes Midroll, was up 13.3% to $17.8 million. Continue Reading
Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio platform has launched its first Spanish-language show. “Trap Kingz” will air every two weeks, with a focus on the trap genre. Puerto Rican artist and trap specialist Bad Bunny will host the first six episodes of the program. Continue Reading
AdsWizz announced that it has been chosen as the audio partner for all direct and programmatic sales for the web radio and podcasts of media sales house Mediamond. The Italy-based business will use AdsWizz’s audio ad-tech products for serving advertisements, connecting and managing programmatic demand sources, and analytics. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s Future of Radio is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: Details on the FCC’s ending the main studio rule, a big expansion for Global, and much more from the world of audio. Continue Reading