Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Believe Digital for sale? A2IM launches celebration of indies. Stand-up comedy app tries niche audience. Continue Reading
Last week, Spotify introduced an initiative called Secret Genius designed to shine a spotlight on the importance of songwriters and producers in an artist’s success. This venture will include awards, songwriting camps, curated playlists, and podcasts. Continue Reading
ASCAP announced that it has entered a multi-year U.S. performance rights deal with YouTube. This arrangement is designed to help members of the performing rights organization to get paid for use of their work on the video platform. Continue Reading
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) announced that it collected C$330 million ($249.3 million) in 2016 total revenues. Streaming revenue skyrocketed up 118% over the previous year. Continue Reading
Underneath the flurry of business activity surrounding Pandora, the audio company has announced a new feature. Auto-Play is a new option only available for listeners on its Premium tier. This new capability lets subscribers switch between the new on-demand approach ann lean-back listening. Continue Reading
Digital voice-activated advertising platform Instreamatic.ai announced its formal launch this week. The service now offers programmatic buying for voice-activated ads that would run on smart home speaker systems and related technology. The technology seems designed around the types of interactions smart speaker owners would have. Continue Reading
audioBoom announced that it is joining the ranks of original content producers. The host, distributor, and monetization expert is debuting five new podcasts through fall 2017. The shows represent several different topics across arts, comedy, news, and culture. Continue Reading
The Verge has entered a partnership with Anchor, using the short-form audio platform to help solicit reader feedback on new podcast ideas. The publisher said it is using Anchor to try out many different ideas and formats for new audio programming. Continue Reading
The latest blog post from Amplifi Media CEO Steve Goldstein reviews the updates Apple has announced for its podcast service. Analytics have arrived. Continue Reading
Podtrac has shared its podcast publisher rankings for May 2017. Most of the ranking remains unchanged from the April 2017 results, barring one new addition. The Washington Post took the No. 10 spot away from The Moth. The journalism outfit’s nine shows pulled in a unique monthly audience of 1.38 million. Continue Reading
At last week’s WorldWide Developer Conference, James O. Boggs, Business Manager of Apple’s podcast division, announced that Apple will introduce podcast consumption analytics later this year. The announcement was tucked quietly onto the end of a long session of WWDC speeches, masking its importance as a much-needed, long-awaited decision by Apple that some industry insiders believed might never come. Continue Reading
Nielsen’s Q4 2016 comparable metrics report continued the upward trajectory for smartphone use seen in its Q3 results. Radio, on the other hand, stayed essentially flat within the U.S. media consumption landscape. Weekly reach for radio has stayed around 93% for several quarters, and radio is used an average of 5.1 days per week. Smartphones are used even more frequently at an average of 5.8 days per week. Continue Reading