Posts filed under ‘subscriptions’
Streaming For Bookworms
The streaming audio marketplace isn’t just about music – Audiobooks is a new service competing for listeners’ ears. This new service competes with Amazon owned Audible.com and offers a cloud based service that lets listeners stream, listen and sync between devices as they move around. One article I read called it “Netflix for audiobooks” and another “Spotify for books”.
The service offers a $24.95 subscription, after an initial free offer, that enables you to stream as many books as you want. It’s a price point that is more expensive than Audible, which offers a tiered rate plan starting at $14.95 for the equivalent of one book a month. Audiobooks has about 10,000 titles in their library.
Some may find the subscription price point a little high, but when compared to the price of books or audiobooks, it’s actually not a high price for consumers looking for more than one book a month. Trade paperbacks these days are around $14.95/month, and hardcovers often cost more than the Audiobooks monthly fee.
The question is, of course, how many subscriptions will users tolerate on a monthly basis? This is the question that no one really has the answer to in the new streaming audio marketplace.
Facebook Likes Third Party Streaming Services
Rumors that Facebook will announce a new music service at its upcoming developer conference f8 are circulating, but it doesn’t sound like that service will sell or stream music. Instead, it sounds like it’s a new set of tools that will enable music services such as Spotify, Pandora, MOG, Rdio and Rhapsody to integrate with its platform. Users will be able to share what service and songs they are listening to.
Reportedly, Rhapsody just launched a beta version of its Facebook integration that lets listeners “like” an artist or song and have that info show up in their friends’ news feeds. The idea is that friends would then want to hear the artist or song, or even sample Rhapsody if they are not a subscriber.
Spotify is already integrated with Facebook, listeners’ friends can access the playlists their friends have chosen to share. Rdio’s current integration enables users to follow other users and find out what albums they have been listening to the most.
Reportedly, the new set of tools will enable the services to enhance their integration with Facebook. Rhapsody spokeswoman Jaimee Steele said the company is “definitely interested” in improving its Facebook tools. ”We think that music is a very social experience and we are always looking at ways to enhance that experience,” she said.
Facebook first embraced a higher level of integration with music services almost a year and a half ago with Pandora. Descriptions that I am reading of the new integration sound like an expansion of that experiment, with easier ways to like and share music. With 700 million users worldwide and roughly 150 million in the US, facebook has incredible clout and the ability to drive more listening online. This news indicates that they intend to work with third party streaming services rather than develop their own, which is good news for folks like Pandora, Spotify, MOG, Rdio and others.
Siriusly Streaming
Sirius XM has been streaming its programming and offering it as an add-on of $2.99 for subscribers to the satellite music service. Apparently that has been going well because now Sirius XM will enhance that service by adding programming that is not available via satellite to their streaming platform, including BBC Radio 1, programming that just last week was cancelled by Sirius XM as a satellite channel.
Rather than discontinuing its relationship with BBC Radio 1, Sirius XM is clearly using the channel to build more audience online. It will time shift the live programming to enable US listeners to listen in the same daypart that the programming is intended for. Sirius XM will also expand its coverage of BBC Radio 1′s programming and will also broadcast concerts from the extensive and wide-ranging BBC Radio archive, many of which are not commercially available. by artists such as Led Zeppelin, U2, Lady Gaga, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Duran Duran, Queen, The Cure and other music legends.
“We are happy to continue our valuable relationship with the BBC and thrilled to now be able to give our listeners access to BBC Radio 1 programming on our expanding internet platform as well as deliver special concert performances to a variety of our satellite radio channels. The additional programming ranges from legendary music icons to today’s rising stars whose exclusive performances for the BBC are featured regularly,” said Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer, SiriusXM.
In addition to adding BBC Radio 1 to its online offerings, Sirius XM will now offer other channels online only as well, including The Groove, CSpan, Neil Diamond Radio, Simon & Garfunkle Radio, Rosie radio, and more.
While this all kind of leaves me scratching my head, I think it’s safe to draw the conclusion that streaming is going well for the satellite broadcaster. How well is anyone’s guess, but it sure looks to me like they’re interested in keeping more than a toe in the Internet radio game…
Eye On Spotify
Last week was a busy week for Internet radio. Clear Channel shook things up at the beginning of the week with their announcement of the coming “New iHeartRadio”, later in the week Spotify launched its US based service. While I think Spotify’s entrance here is interesting, I don’t think it will have an enormous impact on free streaming radio options.
Spotify’s on-demand service is more competitive with other highly interactive services that are looking to replace personal listening collections. Those include services like MOG, rdio and Rhapsody. Cloud based services that allow a listener to sync their own music files and stream from multiple devices are a competitor to on-demand services as well. Premium Internet radio services, such as Pandora One and Slacker’s premium ad-free option may also be affected, as I think they will compete for the same dollars.
More than 2/3′s of Internet users here in the US have paid for digital/online content already, according to The Pew Internet and American Life Project, 1/3 have paid for digital music online. That information validates the consumer subscription model. But how many different services will the consumer pay for? Probably not more than one or two.
In addition to all the streaming on-demand services competing for digital dollars, there are subscription based podcasts such as Adam Carolla, Bubba The Love Sponge and others. In fact, I think Sirius XM, with its monthly subscription fee, is ultimately competing for the same monthly listening subscription dollars.
The arrival of Spotify, long heralded by themselves, has been anticipated by industry watchers aware of their large listening share in Europe. But the general public is largely unaware of them so far. Interest in earlier Euro based services has been weak – GOOM Radio launched and quickly fizzled, and UK born Last.fm, which CBSRADIO picked up a few years back, has not been able to build a massive following.
It’s an interesting case study from the get go, one that I’m looking forward to tracking..
Cady Tells A Few Slacker Secrets
I attended RadioInk’s Convergence conference last week and joined a panel discussion about streaming versus broadcasting, which examined the technologies, expenses, and revenue opportunities of each of those options. As you can guess, I advocated for broadcasters to pursue streaming and develop an online audience along with strategies for monetizing that separately from their broadcast platform.
One of the featured speakers on the second day was Jim Cady, CEO of Slacker. Cady began his speech by telling the audience that Slacker doesn’t speak or share information at industry gatherings very often, nor does he read industry press or blogs regularly. The message, as I took it, was that Slacker is different and doesn’t really feel that there is much for them to learn from meetings or press. I have to say, this was a curious way to warm up the crowd. 
Cady went on to give us an overview of Slacker’s strategy. A key element of their success is Slacker’s backend that integrates with wireless carriers for easy billing. Slacker will be pre-installed on 52 million handsets this year alone, and when listeners want to upgrade to subscription, they can easily be billed through those carriers. No doubt, this goes a long way to selling subscriptions.
Slacker’s main objective is to get listeners to sign up for the free ad supported version. After that, they hope to upsell them to ad free or on-demand streaming options. According the Cady, Slacker has “hundreds of thousands” of paid subscribers.
Cady went on to say that Slacker has 26 million listeners. I’m sure he meant to say that they have 26 million registered users, a number that is roughly 30% of Pandora‘s 80 million. This is the first snapshot we have of the size of Slacker’s database and I have to say, 26 million is a big number of users. He wouldn’t discuss revenue, but Cady did say they work with Triton and a total of 26 ad networks in all.
Slacker Scores With ESPN Radio
Slacker added another big radio brand to its growing list of branded audio content yesterday when they announced that they would be adding access to an interactive ESPN channel that will give listeners access to lots of customizable content from the largest sports network in the country. Slacker already offers its listeners ABC News, plus both genre based and personalizable music channels, artist programmed channels, comedy and hispanic programming.
It’s a very nice play for Slacker, and one that certainly gives them bragging rights to what may be the most varied program offerings in the land. Slacker, which is US based, streams audio content to listeners in the US and Canada. The ESPN station will be available to all Slacker listeners for free and Slacker Radio Plus subscribers will have access to the full ESPN experience for $3.99 a month.
ESPN Radio already has a really nice online presence, ranked 7th on AndoMedia’s Webcast Metrics ranker for December with an average number of active sessions streaming of around 15,000. So why this deal? ”It has long been our mission to provide listeners with the ability to experience ESPN Audio content wherever they are and through whichever medium fits best into their busy lifestyle,” said Traug Keller,senior vice president, Production Business Divisions, ESPN, Inc..
It’s all about extending the brand, which may well mean this is the first, but not the last streaming audio deal for ESPN.
Slacker meanwhile is rapidly becoming the largest streaming audio content network, with a nice list of big name radio brands to offer its listeners, in customizable formats that make it easy and appealing for them to get what they want. Which is probably the key to getting them to pay for it – Slacker’s got some deals in place with mobile phone companies that make that a little easier with the phones preloaded with Slacker apps and direct billing from the phone companies for customers that subscribe.
I’m impressed, this is a nice move by Slacker, who seems to be well on its way to building a nice streaming audio content network. Now if they would just change their name…
MOG Steps On The Gas
On-demand subscription music service MOG has joined the parade of online music platforms that are announcing partnerships with device and automotive manufacturers. Today MOG announced partnerships with LG for televisions and Sonos for home stereo systems. The New York Times reports they are also about to become part of BMW’s Mini lineup, alongside Pandora and others.
MOG will be pre-installed on the devices, and require a subscription. MOG is a subscription based on demand – or cloud – service that enables listening from various mobile devices.
MOG’s Founder and CEO is David Hyman, who will be appearing at RAIN Summit West on April 11th during NAB Show Week in Las Vegas. He’s not shy about his ambitions. “The car is the holy grail,” Mr. Hyman told the NY Times. “I look at the satellite-radio market in America, with 20 million subscribers, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t be 20 million subscribers.”
Pandora is already in a lot of cars, with deals for Ford, Toyota, Mini, and other automotive manufacturers in place. But MOG’s service gives listeners access to a different kind of listening – to songs on demand. Similar to cloud based music streaming services Rhapsody, rdio, and Spotify (which is not yet in the US), MOG is the first of this type of service to announce a deal to get into the dashboard of a major car manufacturer.
But not the last..
Taking Streaming Siriusly
Things aren’t looking so bad for Sirius XM these days. They finished 2010 with more than 20 million subscribers, and renewed their contract with Howard Stern, and managed to report profits for most of last year. And while the crisis isn’t over – they still have plenty of debt to worry about – the skies seem to be brightening.
In part, they can thank Pandora for that. Pandora, who filed papers last week as a first step in their move to go public, is raising awareness of and interest in new radio technologies. And while Sirius XM isn’t really an Internet radio company, they have a substantial presence online, and could certainly head in that direction.
Actually, I’ve begun to wonder if they haven’t already – they just announced a new deal that puts them on Sonos Internet radio devices along with Pandora and others. They’re working on a new platform for Android, they’re already on iPhone. They are already in the Internet radio game – and getting an extra $2.99 a month for it from their subscribers.
Pandora’s impressed a bunch of folks with their stats – 80 million registered users is an impressive number. But we know from the filing that less than 10% of them are paying customers – and while Pandora is watching ad dollars flow in, they have a big job in front of them in turning all those listeners into advertising revenue. Pandora’s subscribers listen to ad-free music streams.
Meanwhile, Sirius XM has reported that they have more than 20 million subscribers as of the end of 2010. Who are both paying to listen AND listening to commercials. Auto sales are on the upswing, and Sirius XM gains subs from that as well.
Analysts are liking Sirius XM, and I have to say their business model is starting to look somewhat sound…
Last.fm Lockdown
Image via CrunchBase
Last week we had a couple of good reasons to take a second look at subscription models for streaming music business. First, Last.fm announced that the radio service built into Last.fm mobile apps and on home entertainment devices will become an ad-free, subscriber-only feature on February 15th. It’s not practical, they explained on their blog, to deliver an ad-supported version of their streams on mobile and other connected devices, so they’ll continue to offer an ad supported free version from their website, accessible through your computer, but if you want to listen on other devices you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee of $3 per month – the cost of a “fancy coffee.”
Last is not the first (get it?) service to head in this direction – many other services offer ad-free versions of their sites for a small subscription fee. Pandora One, Pandora‘s ad-free version, costs $3 a month as well – although they do offer a free version that is available with mobile devices. It’s working out okay for them – as we saw in Pandora’s recent SEC filing, they have managed to convert a small percentage of their large user base to paying customers, and generated 13.6% of their revenues in the first 3 quarters of last year from subscriptions.
Other services are working the subscription model as well – MOG, rdio, and Rhapsody, who offers unlimited streaming for $10 a month along with the ability to transfer playlists to a device for offline listening.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 33% of Internet users said they had paid for digital music online – which presumably includes downloads as well as access to premium streamed content. Digital music topped the list of items consumers were most likely to pay for.
Streaming music services have struggled to develop successful business models. CBSRadio, which owns Last.fm, no doubt decided that profitability or the pursuit of that is important enough to implement some changes that will no doubt impact the size of their audience. Can they leverage their brand and audience into a decent size subscriber base? Some early indicators say they just may be able to.
Slacker Heads North
Slacker has has announced that its ad supported free Basic Radio service is now available in Canada. This is a move that puts Slacker ahead of Pandora in offering its free streaming radio service north of the border.
A year ago, Slacker began offering free interactive channels and streaming to Canadians, but only for a 30 day trial after which listeners had to agree to pay $3.99 a month to continue.
Now listeners can freely listen to more than 100 expert-programmed genre stations or create and share customized music stations starting with either Slacker’s programmed stations or by artist’s name or song title. Interactive options include the “Fine Tune” feature which enables listeners to adjust the frequency of artists and songs and choose to hear more classic versus newer or popular versus fringe selections.
Competitively this is a nice move for Slacker. XM Canada, a streaming music extension offered by XM Canada and Sirius Canada which gave subscribers access to their favourite satellite radio stations online, was cancelled in November 2010 and replaced with an offering that forced subscribers to pay an additional fee. Pandora, the widely popular online radio platform in the US, has yet to offer access to listeners from Canada.
