RAIN’s Weekend Perspective summarizes the week’s important events for a weekend catch-up, and revives your weary frontal cortex for the coming week.
NEW & BETA
DAB+ in the Netherlands: The Dutch government has mandated nationwide switch-over to digital radio by 2017, and this week the infrastructure was completed, four years early. [READ]
Radio Search Engine: Michael Robertson’s new venture is a fresh way of interacting with radio. Instantly scan the global radio dial for any song or artist. RAIN reviews the site and talks with its creator. [READ]
MUSIC SERVICES & APPS
YouTube Music Awards: They happened, but nobody watched. Well, under a million, which is nobody by YouTube standards. [READ] A guest column by Jennifer Lane argues that the event tells a story of industry disruption. [READ]
Rdio adds personalization: Long time coming, but Rdio now gets smarter about its users over time. [READ]
Non-U.S. service make gains: Bloom.fm and Deezer both reach user-growth milestones. Bloom has 500,000 users and Deezer surpassed 10-million. [READ]
Spotify and Songkick: Songkick adds concert and tour information that matches up with the Spotify user’s music collection. [READ]
ILLUMINATION
Triton Webcast Metrics for September: The monthly report came out this week, and RAIN provides four-year trend lines of webcast leaders, and year-over-year analysis. The charts tell a quick story. [READ]
Pandora audience metrics: The music-streaming service discloses its internal measurements at the start of each month. In October, listening was up, but listeners were down. Unsurprisingly, media commentary was mixed. [READ]
Weak weekly album sales: They reached the lowest point since 1991. RAIN commentary offers historical perspective on how the album has suffered as a product over 15 years, and whether streaming music hurts or helps. [READ]
MONEY & BUSINESS
iHeartRadio: The Clear Channel-owned listening platform announces a new head of programming, iHeart vet Chris Williams. At the same time, the service discloses that it has 40-million registered users. [READ]
Listn: The social music app gets $500k seed funding. RAIN reviews and analyzes the app, which collects the user’s entire music collection from all participating services, and fosters community. [READ]
OUTBURSTS
Billy Bragg criticizes labels: Part of the ongoing, diversified “Spotify debate,” singer-songwriter Billy Bragg posts a Facebook statement to fellow musicians. The problem isn’t Spotify, he announces, it’s the label contracts. [READ]