CEO Rich Riley said at the start of the year that Shazam would make pushes into more than audio, and to that end, the company has rolled out a new visual component for its mobile app. The software made its reputation for the ability to recognize and identify songs; now it can also scan for an image. What’s Shazam’s end goal in expanding beyond audio? Continue Reading
Mary Meeker updated her yearly Internet Trends report at the ReCode conference yesterday. Meeker’s a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and she’s an expert at seeing the next big thing. In 2011 she predicted that online audio was the ‘next big thing.’ Continue Reading
Roger Lanctot is Associate Director of Strategy Analytics, and a thought leader in the connected-car space. In this guest article, he notes that VW is slyly moving to the front of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay rollouts. “It is only the latest chapter in the smartphone integration arms race.”
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Indian music service Gaana suffered an invasive hack of its membership files, and the service is shut down while the problem is assessed and remedied. An individual publicly took responsibility for the hack on Facebook. Seven and a half million Gaana users had their passwords accessed. Continue Reading
U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez has approved class action status for Flo & Eddie’s lawsuit against Sirius XM. The new class action certification means that other artists whose music was recorded before the advent of federal copyright law can join the lawsuit to seek damages. Sirius XM had argued that it would be difficult to calculate damages for the different artists joining the suit, but was unable to convince the judge. Continue Reading
The time to register is now for the latest RAIN Report: Programmattic Fast-Tracks Revenue Growth for Digital Audio, a free webinar and whitepaper produced in collaboration with WideOrbit. Click through to register.
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StreamGuys, a SaaS (software as a Service) company which provides stream services to broadcasters, has added a silence detection feature to its SGalerts toolset. The company calls dead air “the costliest technical issue to the business of broadcast.”
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The Download on Podcasts is a weekly feature sponsored by PodcastOne.
One bifurcation of the podcast market illuminates a new level of professionalism: Informal chatting vs. highly produced infotainment shows. What is the future of “chatcasting”? A suggestion for iTunes.
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App Annie released its April 2015 index of the top performing mobile apps in the U.S. Pandora held the top spot for top app by downloads and revenue, followed by Spotify. SoundCloud was fourth by downloads and iHeartRadio was fifth. In terms of revenue, Beats Music was the No. 3 app, while Rhapsody secured the No. 6 place. Continue Reading
Asian streaming platform KKBOX has inked a partnership with Merlin, an independent digital rights agency. As a result of the deal, some of the 20,000 independent labels and distributors represented by Merlin will be featured on the Taiwan-based streaming service. The deal covers Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan. Continue Reading
On the Move tracks hires, promotions, and other notable personnel changes in the audio industry. IFPI appoints new board member; Michelle Jubelirer rises to COO of Capitol. Continue Reading
David Landau and Spencer Brown, former co-CEOs of Dial Global/Westwood One, have partnered with Michael Rolnick to create DGital Media, a podcast network. Partnering with the new entity at launch is Re/code, which (separately) was acquired by Vox Media yesterday. Continue Reading