Now Adele Is Snubbing Spotify
Last week the world belonged to Adele, who won award after award at the Grammys. But you can’t hear 21, her award winning album, on Spotify. Adele’s pulled her music from the service. Joining Coldplay, Paul McCartney and a few others, Adele – most likely with the encouragement of her record label, is boycotting [...]
Digital Song Sales and Streaming Performances Were Up in 2011
For the first time, digital music sales are larger than physical sales; accounting for 50.3% of all music purchases in 2011. Digital track sales set a new record with 1.27 billion sales in 2011; an increase of 100 million sales (8.4%) over 2010. Total digital album growth was 20% in 2011 as well, according to Nielsen Soundscan. [...]
eMarketer: 2012 Will Be A Big Year For Streaming Music
Cloud based streaming of music will be a key digital trend this year, according to a report by eMarketer. Rapid adoption of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices has shifted consumer expectations. Now, consumers expect consumption to be seamless across all of their connected platforms. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity for content [...]
Last Year’s Biggest Story
Last year was quite a year for Internet radio and related streaming music services, and judging from some of the end of the year activity, this year should be lots of fun as well. I took the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, so here’s my just-a-little-late 2011 recap, summed up in what I [...]
Pandora’s Free Concert Series
Last fall when Tim Westergren keynoted the RAIN Summit in Chicago he spent time talking about how Pandora can use the information they gather from listener’s preferences to connect artists with their audiences. Based on a listener’s location, and the songs they give thumbs up or down to, Pandora can guess what other artists they [...]
Play, Skip And Pause NPR Streams
When it comes to offering excellent diverse digital audio programming, NPR has been doing it really well for a long time. Years ago they started offering many of their weekly or daily news/talk programs as podcasts which dominated the podcast charts at ITunes. As iPhones made connected access more mobile, they began to offer the [...]
New Study Claims Folks That Stream Buy Less Music
NARM, the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, and research firm NPD Group have released a study showing that AM and FM radio are still very relevant to consumers in discovering new music. Traditional radio was the most popular way that respondents discovered new music in this study, while online radio and web videos were very [...]
Coldplay Gives Spotify The Cold Shoulder
Coldplay released a new album this week and didn’t license subscription services such as Spotify to play it, a strategy that is raising concern for on-demand services. There’s been a debate brewing about the wisdom of offering brand new releases through on-demand subscription services and whether that has an impact on song and album sales. [...]
Study: More Americans Are Listening On Connected Devices In Cars
Americans spend a lot of time listening to music in their cars. According to a new report by NPD Group, two out of three Americans say most of their music listening happens in cars. Most of that listening is still to radio and cds – but that appears to be changing. The report shows that [...]
Artists Streaming Albums Online For Free
There is a growing number of artists who are taking their music promotion directly to their fans by offering streaming access to it online. Why not – it’s a great way to give people a sample – and if they like what they hear they might buy a song, share it online, or buy a [...]
