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RAIN 7/8: Lee Abrams envisions radio's next "rock" (hint: it's not rock)
·3 days ago RAIN SUMMIT KEYNOTER JOINS ACCURADIO’S GEHRON IN DISCUSSION OF QUESTION: IS ROCK RADIO DYING?You never know what radio legend Lee Abrams is going to discuss, but this may just be a preview of the kind of content he’ll tackle in his keynote at RAIN Summit Midwest (more info here).
“Is the Rock format dead? Well, maybe. But who cares? It’ll never go away,” he told Radio Ink. Abrams’ article follows comments from AccuRadio COO John Gehron to the Chicago Tribune about the struggles of rock radio in the Windy City (here). “In many of the major markets, rock is struggling,” Gehron said. “It’s not the dominant sound that it was in the ’60s and ’70s.” Interestingly, Abrams argues (here) that the “new rock ‘n’ roll” is news and information. “The new number one ‘song’ is a news story.” (Coincidentally, it’s rumored that the new Merlin Media — for which John Gehron serves as Chairman/Advisory Board — will flip two major rock FM stations Lee Abrams will be a keynote speaker at RAIN Summit Midwest, which takes place at the Conclave in Minneapolis a week from tomorrow (Saturday, July 16). You can find out more about our second-annual RAIN Summit Midwest here or register to attend here. TURNTABLE.FM REPORTEDLY RAISES $7.5 MILLIONBusiness Insider reports that social music service Turntable.fm has raised $7.5 million in funding, based on a $37.5 million valuation. However, Turntable.fm co-founder Seth Goldstein tells TechCrunch that “We have not closed any new financing.” Find the original Business Insider article here and TechCrunch‘s write-up here.
Turntable.fm is a new music streaming service that allows users to basically act as a DJ, picking songs to play to other users in various “rooms.” Users can chat with one another and award good DJs points (more RAIN coverage here). CLEAR CHANNEL’S iHEARTRADIO: “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” COMING MONDAYiHeartRadio has created a Facebook event for a “major announcement” on Monday, July 11. The invitation teases some sort of playlist system, asking “Who would be on your list?” Find the event here.
Some have speculated that the announcement will be Clear Channel’s answer to Pandora, which chairman of media and entertainment Bob Pittman has been talking about since January (RAIN coverage here). In late June, Radio Ink reported that Clear Channel’s Pandora-like service would arrive in fall (more here). MIT PROF: RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS SHOULD BE FUELED BY COMPARISONSThe recommendation engines that power sites from Pandora and Slacker to Netflix and Amazon could be improved, according to an associate professor at MIT. Rather than having users rate individual items on some sort of scale (5-stars, for example), Devavrat Shah says recommendation systems should have users compare pairs of products.
To prove his point, Shah created a car-buying recommendation service that “predicted car buyers’ preferences with 20% greater accuracy than existing algorithms.” Read more from MIT News here. Full story (and reader comments):  RAIN 7/8: Lee Abrams envisions radio's next "rock" (hint: it's not rock)More RAIN
RAIN 7/7: Pandora pads ratings lead in May Webcast Metrics
·4 days ago ACCURADIO, ESPN, EMF, SALEM FLAT MONTH-TO-MONTH, OTHER WEBCASTERS DOWN SLIGHTLYTriton Digital’s new Webcast Metrics shows Pandora maintaining audience growth (following a post-holiday drop in early 2011), while most other webcasters were flat or dropped slightly in May.
The drops in AAS (mostly ranging between 4-10% month-to-month) roughly match the decreases we saw from April to May 2010. They’re likely due, in some part, to the long Memorial Day weekend on May 30. Pandora’s Domestic (Daypart 6am-midnight, Mon-Sun) AAS (Average Active Sessions, which is essentially equivalent to AQH — i.e., average simultaneous listeners) is up 5% over April 2011. Its AAS of 542,606 is a new high for 2011. This is the first month since February 2011 that Pandora’s numbers have not been affected by a tracking error in some of its mobile apps. Other pureplays dropped slightly month-to-month, except for AccuRadio which stayed flat. As for broadcasters, ESPN, Salem and EMF Corporate were all flat month-to-month. Others were slightly down. Second-ranked CBS Radio dropped 4%, while #3 Clear Channel was down 3%. Overall, the combined AAS of all webcasters in Triton Digital’s May 2011 Top 20 ranker is up 43% over May 2010. You can find our coverage of April 2011’s Webcast Metrics here. Find the Domestic and All Streams Mon-Sun 6a-12m rankings below. Triton Digital’s full May 2011 Webcast Metrics can be found here (PDF).
VERIZON AXES UNLIMITED DATA PLANS, NEEDN’T IMPACT MOBILE NET RADIO LISTENINGVerizon Wireless today retired its unlimited monthly mobile data plans, instead offering a series of tiered options. Customers can access 2GB of data per month for $30, 5GB for $50 or 10GB for $80.
How might the new tiers affect mobile Internet radio listening? Assuming customers never use Wi-Fi, we calculate they could listen to Pandora or AccuRadio (or any 32kbps web radio stream) for more than 4 hours a day before surpassing a 2GB/month cap. (That means free users could feasibly hit Pandora’s 40 hour/month ceiling before they surpass their data cap.) Moreover, Nielsen found that in Q1 2011, U.S. mobile users were consuming an average of 425MB of data per month. Indeed, when AT&T pulled their unlimited data plans last year, they said 98% of their customers use less than 2GB of data per month (RAIN coverage here). — MS
NIELSEN: 44% OF APP DOWNLOADERS CHOSE MUSIC APPSA new Nielsen study found that 44% of mobile app downloaders chose to download a music app in a 30-day period. That places music as the fourth-most-popular app category.Additionally, Nielsen found that 87% of app downloaders are willing to pay for entertainment apps. Find out more from Nielsen here. 15 BILLION APP DOWNLOADS ON APPLE DEVICESApple announced today that its reached 15 billion app downloads. It took the company three years to reach the milestone, notes Evolver.fm‘s Eliot Van Buskirk. To sell that many songs, it took Apple 10.5 years. Read more from Van Buskirk here.Full story (and reader comments): RAIN 7/7: Pandora pads ratings lead in May Webcast Metrics
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RAIN 7/6: Nearing U.S. launch, Spotify offers invitations to American users
·5 days ago POPULAR EUROPEAN STREAMING MUSIC SERVICE POSTS U.S. LANDING PAGEIt’s official. After months and months of rumors, reports and hazy launch dates, on-demand music service Spotify is finally coming to the U.S.
The service has posted a U.S. landing page (here), where you can request an invitation to join the Stateside launch. Spotify is a free, ad-supported streaming music service that offers on-demand access to a catalog of over 13 million tracks. It also offers subscription plans that remove ads and include other benefits. As of September 2010, the service had 10 million users, of which 1 million were paying subscribers. It has, up until now, only been available in Europe. “We should note, however,” writes Engadget, “that there’s still no definite time table to report, but it’s fairly obvious that those final record deals are close enough to done to call this thing a victory.” Read more here. In May it was reported that Spotify reached more young people in Sweden than broadcast radio (RAIN coverage here). The Wall Street Journal wrote then, “Spotify’s ability to attract audiences from commercial radio should also be seen as a threat to commercial radio providers in the U.S. market.” ESPN RADIO LAUNCHES PERSONALIZABLE WEB PLAYERLast Friday ESPN Radio debuted a new Internet radio player featuring personalization and recommendation options.
The new player, dubbed ESPN Audio NOW, apparently learns from users’ preferences and listening history to recommend new content. ESPN Audio NOW streams 30 live ESPN Radio stations and offers access to the archives of more than 100 podcast programs. It also includes the ability to build playlists out of on-demand content. You can find out more from ESPN Radio’s press release here. TRITON PROMOTE MILANO TO COO OF STREAMING DIVISION Triton Digital has promoted Dominick Milano (pictured) to COO of the company’s Streaming Division.
Milano previously served as EVP/Publisher Sales at Triton Digital. He’s been with the company since 2006. His experience includes work at Katz Media Group, Clear Channel and Interep National Radio Sales. Read more from Triton Digital’s press release here. 60% OF U.S. MOBILE WEB TRAFFIC ON APPLE DEVICES, 25% ON iPAD ALONE While a still small but quickly-growing 8% of U.S. web traffic comes from mobile and tablet platforms, over 25% of that traffic is on the Apple iPad.
This means, added to the iPhone’s 35% share, “at 60.7% of U.S. mobile web browsing, iOS nearly doubles Android at 31.6%.” That’s from analytics firm NetApplications’ latest NetMarketShare report, covered in Fierce Mobile Content. Apple has sold more than 25 million iPads since introducing them in April 2010. Read more here. RAIN 7/6: Nearing U.S. launch, Spotify offers invitations to American users
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RAIN 7/5: AARP launches 18-channel web radio service, powered by Slacker
Stories·6 days ago AARP AIMS TO “ACT AS A GUIDE FOR MILLIONS OF OLDER LISTENERS” CURIOUS ABOUT DIGITAL MUSICAARP yesterday launched 18 Internet radio streams powered by Slacker. According to The New York Times, Concord Music Group (a record company which in 2007 jointly launched the Hear Music label with Starbucks) programmed the channels, each of which includes about 500 tracks.
“The idea,” writes NYT, “is for the organization [AARP] to act as a guide for millions of older listeners who are curious but may be intimidated by digital music.” Each channel focuses on a genre (including rock, blues, jazz, classical, modern hits, R&B and more) and features a selection of Slacker’s interactive features (like song skipping). You can find the AARP Internet radio stations here, read the organization’s press release here and find NYT’s coverage here. UK BROADCASTER LAUNCHES STREAMS ON WE7UK broadcaster GMG Radio (Guardian Media Group’s radio division) recently launched its three radio genre categories — Smooth, Real and Rock Radio — as streams on the web-only European music service We7.
GMG Radio’s stations are also available through Radioplayer, the UK’s all-in-one radio platform (RAIN coverage here). The broadcaster already provides We7 with news and entertainment content. We7 aims to be Europe’s Pandora with its offering of customizable web radio streams, but also provides on-demand features (RAIN coverage here). Read more from GMG Radio here. SOUNDEXCHANGE POSTS WEBINAR FOR WEBCASTERS ON YOUTUBESoundExchange and Triton Digital Media recently conducted a webinar for “service providers” (e.g. webcasters) that make use of copyright recordings on a digital platform (see coverage here). SoundExchange has now made the audio and accompanying visuals for the “Q2Y11 Webinar for Service Providers” available on its YouTube channel here (it’s also here).
SoundExchange is a sponsor of RAIN Summit Chicago, September 13, immediately preceding the NAB/RAB Radio Show. ARS TECHNICA LOOKS TO ROCKY LEGAL HISTORY OF CLOUD MUSIC TO PREDICT GOOGLE, AMAZON’S FUTUREAre the new cloud music services from Google and Amazon, in fact, illegal? That’s the question taken up by a new in-depth article from Ars Technica. The publication examines the history of cloud services (especially Michael Robertson’s MP3.com) to predict what may happen to Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player. Find the article here.Full story (and reader comments): RAIN 7/5: AARP launches 18-channel web radio service, powered by Slacker
RAIN 7/8: Lee Abrams envisions radio's next "rock" (hint: it's not rock) RAIN 7/7: Pandora pads ratings lead in May Webcast Metrics RAIN 7/6: Nearing U.S. launch, Spotify offers invitations to American users RAIN 7/5: AARP launches 18-channel web radio service, powered by Slacker RAIN 7/1: Web-only Pop Gold Radio launches with Top 1000 songs of the 60s from WABC heyday RAIN 6/30: U.S. mobile phone buyers now more likely than not to buy a smartphone  |
Kurt Hanson's blog
Spotify is an "online music service," but that doesn't make it "radio"·4 days ago There have been a lot of references in the trade press recently to the anticipated U.S. debut of Spotify that call it an “online radio service.” I believe that’s a misnomer. Here’s my rationale: For many decades now, consumers have listened to two forms of audio entertainment. To make the discussion easier, let’s focus on music. Basically, you can listen to the music you own, or you can listen to the radio. In the former case — listening to the music you own — you’re in control. You can say, “I think I’ll listen to ‘Heartache Tonight’ by the Eagles right now” and then you can do so. Or you can grab a stack of LPs and shuffle them and stack them on the changer on your turntable. (Putting a random stack of LPs on the changer on your turntable is the 1970s equivalent of hitting “shuffle” in iTunes.) In the latter case — listening to the radio — you typically have access to a wider library of music, but you give up some level of control. To be specific, someone else (or something else, such as a DJ or a radio station’s Selector or MusicMaster scheduling system or Pandora’s decision heuristics) is making the choices. (To add a bit more color to this, I would further argue that if your roommate is picking the songs from his collection, you may have given up control and gotten some more variety, but that’s not “radio” either. There’s got to be some component of it being done from a distance, and for the enjoyment of multiple other people than the music programmer himself or herself.) Pandora and other brands of Internet radio are modern versions of radio: An intelligence (i.e., some combination of people and computers) at a distance from you is creating programming for the enjoyment of numerous listeners. Spotify and Rhapsody, on the other hand, are modern versions of your music collection: You have access to a large library of songs and you can listen to them on demand in the order you want to listen to them. Yes, true, both Spotify and Rhapsody have a “radio” feature as part of their product offering. However, as far as we know, Rhapsody’s radio feature has never gotten a lot of consumer take-up. The fact Spotify and Rhapsody offer a radio component to their service doesn’t make them “an online radio service“ any more than the fact that McDonald’s has salads on the menu makes it “a salad restaurant.” McDonald’s isn’t a “salad restaurant,” and Spotify isn’t a “radio service” — at least as I understand how consumers are primarily using those brands today. In Spotify’s case: “Music service,” yes. But “radio,” no. [Want to debate this or help me fine-tune my definition of “radio”? Write me at feedback@kurthanson.com.] Full story (and reader comments):Spotify is an "online music service," but that doesn't make it "radio"
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