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TuneIn’s New Tool Helps Stations See Traffic
TuneIn has announced a new feature to help stations on its platform analyze and better understand their digital traffic. TuneIn Amplifier is a free, simple tool that provides stations visibility into their TuneIn traffic.
Stations can get daily data from TuneIn Amplifier including total tunes their station received, total unique listeners, average time spent listening and the number of listeners, sorted by country, and state. For listener supported stations using TuneIn’s Donate service, stations can get click through information on that service as well.
This is great – finally TuneIn, a service that provides a great mobile tuning app, an online platform, and a software based tuner that is available in lots of connected devices, is stepping up its offering and helping online stations understand exactly how valuable it is. With 30 million active users, TuneIn is a valuable source of listeners for many stations. 
TuneIn has recently faced some stiff competition from Clear Channel, who has been trying to get broadcasters to sign exclusive digital portal deals with iHeartRadio. I wrote last week about how unwise I think that is for stations. But part of the problem was that broadcasters were not aware of all the traffic they were getting through TuneIn and other digital portals. Nor were they aware of TuneIn’s advantages, such as tuning deals with devices, and dashboard deals with automakers.
TuneIn’s listing is free and so is the service. Stations can sign up and update their profile and listing here.
Transparency is a good thing, and this service is bound to help stations understand and cultivate their digital audience, while helping TuneIn increase the value that the stations perceive in them. It’s a good move all around…
Related articles
- Why Broadcasters Need To Work With Lots of Streaming Portals (audio4cast.com)
Mobile Music Ad Dollars Are Growing
Mobile ad dollars are growing, according to eMarketer. As smartphone usage expands, revenues from the ad-supported component of mobile music, games and videos alone will grow 52.7% this year to $433.8 million.
Two things are driving the increase – one being the growing audience for mobile music, gaming and video content. The second reason is that more and more content providers are shifting to an ad based revenue model, stimulating marketplace spending. Spending on ads for mobile music, gaming and video content accounted for 20% of the revenue in the space last year but will increase to 30% by 2015, to nearly $3.59 billion. The remainder of the revenues will be paid by subscription and download fees.
There’s a strong tolerance for mobile ads if the apps are free – new study info from Nielsen showed both that free apps are preferred by consumers and 51% of consumers say they are okay with advertising on their devices if they can access the content for free.
Monetizing mobile content with ads is becoming increasingly important for services such as Pandora. With the most downloaded free music app in Apple and Google app stores, Pandora sees the majority of its audience on mobile devices.
Lots of New Internet Radio Deals and Devices at CES
As it was last year, Internet radio in cars is a big topic at CES this week. Ford and Subaru both announced deals and devices that enable listening to Internet radio while you drive.
Subaru announced a deal with Harman’s Aha platform. Aha is powering the Web-connected “fourth band” of radio, alongside AM, FM, and satellite 
radio. Offered on future models, Subaru owners will have instant access to tens of thousands of stations of Web-based content such as: on-demand music from MOG and Rhapsody; Internet radio from SHOUTcast, CBS RADIO, and Slacker; live news; the latest information, news and entertainment podcasts from NPR and others; free audio books; personalized traffic reports; Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds; personalized restaurant recommendations from Yelp; and much more. Functionality will be via an iPhone app, already released, and an upcoming Android app.
On a similar note, Ford announced a new integration for its SYNC AppLink which will bring voice enabled iHeartRadio to its cars. ”Now Ford drivers will be able to create their own custom stations, tune in to the leading radio stations from 150 cities and stay connected to their favorite on-air personalities. Through Ford SYNC AppLink, iHeartRadio will offer drivers the ultimate voice-controlled, personal listening experience.” said Brian Lakamp, president of Clear Channel Digital.
The SYNC enabled iHeartRadio app is already available for iTunes and Blackberries, and coming soon for Androids. Which may be the big selling point that’s attracting folks like Greater Media and Cumulus who have recently signed on with iHeartRadio as their exclusive digital aggregator for online and mobile streaming.
Arbitron’s Internet Radio Measurement Headache
In 2003 I started a company called Net Radio Sales that was designed, in large part, to offer a sales solution to streaming broadcast radio stations. Later that year I met with an Arbitron executive to discuss their decision to shut down server based streaming measurement and shift to census based measurement through comScore. I told Arbitron that broadcasters in particular would suffer from that because their streaming audiences were small and local, and would never show up on a national panel. At the time, Arbitron told me that they had two clients (AOL and Yahoo) who were pushing them to move to panel based measurement, and since they were the only two paying clients, the decision had been made. They shuttered Measurecast and moved to estimating streaming audiences based on comScore panel behavior. In case you don’t know the rest, a few years later they abandoned that game as well.
I’ll bet Arbitron wishes they had stayed in server based streaming measurement way back then, because what they had was a platform that measured everyone – streaming broadcast and online only stations, all together. Which brings us to the topic of the day. Now, Arbitron has a bunch of clients who want things done a certain way. Again. This time it’s their broadcast radio clients, and they want Arbitron to measure streaming broadcast stations and online only stations separately. Not just separately but differently, so that the ratings cannot be easily combined.
It’s a problem for Arbitron because their broadcast radio clients pay them a lot of money and they don’t want to alienate them. Those clients want Arbitron to measure their streams – in such a way that they can roll up their broadcast and streaming audiences into one and sell that total audience to advertisers. And they don’t want to be compared to online stations.
And then we have Pandora. Pandora has a large audience – large enough that they can now claim to have more listeners in many markets than some broadcast stations. And they are claiming that – by working with research firm Edison Research, who has helped them crunch numbers and make comparisons. Using standard calculations that are not proprietary.
Under pressure from its clients, Arbitron recently sent out a letter intended to dissuade buyers from using the data that Pandora, with the help of Edison, has been releasing, stating: “We strongly advise clients to avoid comparing self-reported audience estimates from Internet music services to Arbitron radio audience estimates…” They offer several reasons why it’s a bad idea, including claiming that there’s no way to know if anyone is really listening. Really. The most overused objection to radio, the objection that every salesperson in the world learned to overcome in Radio 101? I just really think it’s the pot calling the kettle black on that one.
But on to the thing that really concerns me. Arbitron says comparisons between broadcast streams and online streams can’t be made because there is a vast difference between “one to one” and “one to many” streaming audiences. They’ve created an imaginary line to justify measuring the two categories separately and differently. Supposedly, because “one to many” audiences are all exposed to the message simultaneously while “one to one” listeners are exposed to the message during their unique sessions, the data is different and cannot be assimilated.
Huh?
“This is an absolutely meaningless distinction” says Kurt Hanson, Publisher of RAIN: Radio and Internet Newsletter and Founder of AccuRadio, an online station. “Case in point: If Samuel Adams wants to deliver one million impressions of a commercial to listeners in the 4pm hour next Friday (to use a simplified example), they can either buy (A) a couple dozen top AM/FM radio stations, in which case the WAAA listeners will hear it at 4:08pm, the WBBB listeners will hear it at 4:10pm, the WCCC listeners will hear it at 4:13pm, and so forth, or (B) they can buy their desired demographic slice of the audience of a brand like Pandora, in which case some listeners will hear it at 4:01pm, some will hear it at 4:02pm, and so forth. In BOTH scenarios, not all of the target consumers are hearing the spot at the same exact moment! That’s never been important to the advertiser. Both scenarios are precisely the same, in terms if effect, for Samuel Adams.”
I asked one of the smartest agency folks I know – Natalie Swed Stone, US Director, National Radio Investment, OMD, what she thought. She pointed me to her write up for RBR, which she wrote a few weeks ago, and I highlight this quote: “The research has to follow the investment patterns. The more uniform the data, the easier it will be–but marketers and agencies will continue to buy what they want and use best available research to evaluate and estimate behavior.” In other words, research firms should offer data based on the ways that buyers want to buy. If the research does not do that, buyers will do what they have to.
Network radio has been adding up time shifted audiences(that are not hearing the message simultaneously) for decades. It’s completely acceptable to represent a network audience’s AQH as the sum of the AQH’s of audiences across the country listening to a program on hundreds of stations at different times. Arbitron’s RADAR product does this. “When we buy national schedules—they can air on different stations at different times—within the prescribed daypart…” Swed Stone told me, “in TV, the currency is currently live plus 3 days (DVR) etc and the currency is the same –even if a person plays back the program 3 days later –it is included in the overall rating.”
To check my thinking on this topic, I spent a lot of time calling and emailing digitally savvy radio people, asking them about this issue. None of my broadcast sources would go on the record, but they uniformly told me that this is a spin game. No one thought the “one to one” and “one to many” distinction holds any water at all. “It’s not intellectually sound.” I was told.
Arbitron is caught in a tough situation. As a research firm, they’re obligated to create products that are fair and objective. But some of their clients don’t want them to do that in a uniform platform. The listening landscape is rapidly evolving into a space that includes new audio platforms. Ultimately, advertisers and listeners will decide the landscape – listeners will listen to what they want to hear and advertisers will spend to reach them.
The audio landscape has never been more diverse and interesting. Pandora, with its enormously popular platform is bringing new advertisers into the space, and this could be a big win for the industry. Grow the pie! Adapting to new dynamics would be time better spent that shoveling sand against the tide..
Beyond Oblivion Loses, SoundCloud Gains In Music Startup Funding
Music related startups received lots of funding in 2011. According to Digital Music News, who kept a tally going all year, startups received $458.8 million in funding last year. That includes $100 million for Spotify, which launched in the US in July.
It also includes $77 million for Beyond Oblivion, an obscure service that many have never heard of, that went belly up this week. Beyond Oblivion had received a ridiculous $87 million in total in funding, and counted News Corp as one of its investors. The service never launched. Boinc, as it was to be called, was planning to offer both ad-free and subscription fee cloud based music streaming which would be paid for by manufacturers of mobile phones, computers and other devices. The huge funding it received and the fact that it spent it all and went bust before launching is causing some to speculate about another online investment bubble (not to mention the sanity of News Corp.)
The new year started off with some new funding for Berlin, Germany based SoundCloud, which just took $50 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the firm that tech trend expert Mary Meeker is partners with. Last year Meeker predicted that online music would be the next “big thing.” Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures is also invested in SoundCloud, a service that enables anyone to record, upload and share music.
Targetspot, MOG, Rdio and Turntable.fm are other Internet radio related services that landed funding deals in 2011. The complete list is here, and below:
Katz Drops Pandora
Katz360 has dropped Pandora from its list of clients, according to a story in Inside Radio this morning. Katz360 is owned by Katz Media Group which is owned by Clear Channel. (Inside Radio is also owned by Clear Channel.)
This is the latest development in a series of events leading to an increasing divide between streaming broadcasters and online stations over whether the two types of listening platforms should be assimilated in terms of measurement – and now in terms of sales strategies and representation. There’s been a big argument brewing over when and how Arbitron will measure Internet radio – with many of their broadcast clients applying heavy pressure to limit the exposure that online only stations such as Pandora have in Arbitron – arguing instead that online only stations should not appear alongside streaming broadcast stations in rankers.
This of course would make it difficult for advertisers and agencies to accurately assess the Internet radio options in one place. Which is apparently the goal of broadcasters. Instead, they want Arbitron ratings that enable them to add their on-air and online audiences so they can represent and price them as one. And they want those ratings to exclude Pandora and other online only stations.
I have to say that I saw this coming. Readers here may be aware that Katz360 is the former Net Radio Sales, a company that I founded in 2003. We sold it to Katz in 2007 and I ran it for another year there before leaving in 2008. It was always our goal to represent both online stations and broadcaster streams together as one large Internet radio network. There is no indication that Katz will discontinue its relations with other online stations. Yet.
Katz, and in particular its spokesperson Mary Beth Garber, have been outspoken in denouncing Pandora’s attempts to position itself as radio and pursue local and national radio revenues. In fact, they’ve been so outspoken that I have been wondering how Katz360 could represent Pandora. (see my comment below my post, here.)
This is hardly a massive blow to Pandora – Katz was representing only their local market revenue and I am sure that both Triton and Targetspot will be eager to add them as clients. It is a blow to Internet radio as I see it – Clear Channel and Katz have declared war and refused to work together with Pandora to develop the Internet radio marketplace…What do YOU think?
A Little Christmas Cheer
There are more than 425 stations streaming Christmas music this year, according to BRS Media, owner of web-radio.fm. That number includes AM/FM stations that are also streaming their Christmas programming online as well as online only stations. This year a record percentage of terrestrial AM/FM radio station are streaming online. Nearly 90% of terrestrial stations, playing Christmas music 24/7 over the air, are streaming online. That’s up from 75% in 2010; 60% in 2008 and up from only 35% in 2005. The total number of Christmas stations streaming has more then doubled in the past five years.
BRS Media, widely known for its top level domains .FM and .AM, has been tracking streamed Christmas offerings through it’s web-radio portal for 16 years as part of its more than 20,000 stations’ offerings. BRS Media launched the radio directory with two stations in the fall of 1995. Today, Web-Radio features nearly Twenty Thousand (20,000) radio station web sites, with over Fourteen Thousand (14,000) stations webcasting On-Line. Visitors to Web-Radio can search for their favorite station by call letters, format, state, country and Internet-only.
You can check out the extensive list of merry offerings here.
Last.fm’s New Site Is a Game Changer
Not to be outdone by recent enhancements by Spotify and Pandora, Last.fm has rolled out a new interface for Last.fm Discover that is easily the best looking offering I’ve seen by a streaming station. It’s based on HTML5 and was developed in tandem with Microsoft to showcase the new capabilities that HTML5 in Internet Explorer 9 can offer.
Last.fm Discover is a customizable, personalizable offering that focuses on new music and artists. Launched a few months ago, the offerings are influenced by Last.fm’s charts of what listeners are scrobbling and listening to on Last.fm.
The site is very playful and inviting – perfectly suited to the Discover theme – rolling green textured hills invite you to explore the various music genres. It’s a fun and inventive look that feels more like a game – listeners can’t help but poke around, relax, hang out and discover new music. Once you select a genre, it shows you some artists and endless options for listening to similar artists, or taking a new direction. It’s addictive – I found it hard to stop clicking. (The screenshot reveals my affection for K pop..)
While much of the new site can be seen in any browser, the experience is enhanced in Internet Explorer 9. In fact, I’m a Chrome user and this got me to open IE for the first time in a while. ”What we want is to see more and more websites using as much of HTML5 as possible and one of the reasons for that is we want websites to be more like apps in the way they feel,” explained Ian Moulster Microsoft product manager.
I really like this new development – I think they’ve done a great job of breaking the mold when it comes to streaming station interfaces, developing a look that matches the station’s theme of discovery. So we’ll see if it gets Last.fm a little more traction in terms of listening. Last.fm has been surprisingly stagnant in terms of audience growth and general awareness here in the US compared to Pandora and Spotify.
Send Your Friends An ECard with Streaming Christmas Music From Live365
Here’s a fun and innovative idea – Live365 has launched a tool that lets anyone create a personalized Christmas e-card and send it to whomever they want, complete with Christmas music. The Live365 holiday radio card builder is available online at live365.com/cards. Senders can send to their entire list of family and friends using email or share their custom greeting on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
I checked it out this afternoon and thought it was great – I selected the type of Christmas music from choices like traditional, country, jazz and classical, uploaded a photo and sent it to myself.
What a great way to virally spread the news about Live365. Folks that receive the card can listen to the Christmas music, send a card of their own, or check out Live365. ”Live365 offers an amazing selection of holiday radio stations featuring curated playlists assembled by our broadcasters,” said Heidi Elgaard, Director of Marketing. “We’re excited to offer a custom holiday e-card that allows people to easily share a personalized musical experience with their friends and families.”
I’m sending them to lots of people on my list…
Spotify Just Grabbed Control of the Streaming Music Game
Spotify held a press conference yesterday where they announced some big innovations to their streaming music platform. Now the Spotify Platform gives third party developers the opportunity to build innovative, engaging music-based apps.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek took the stage and – after introducing Spotify with a brief history, told the audience that Spotify is becoming a music platform that is a lot more than a streaming service. Now third party developers can create “beautiful, responsive apps” that make Spotify their own. He introduced 16 partners that illustrate the concept. He introduced Jann Wenner, Founding Editor and Publisher of Rolling Stone, as one of the first app partners. Wenner spoke enthusiastically about Spotify – “Everytime you open your desktop you have the history of recorded music at your fingertips.” Now you’ll also have the opportunity to read artist reviews and listen to playlists curated by Rolling Stone within the same platform.
The 13 global partners launching on the Spotify App Finder include Billboard, Fuse, The Guardian, Last.fm, Moodagent, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Songkick, Soundrop, TuneWiki and We Are Hunted, with Top10 and ShareMyPlaylists apps coming soon.
Spotify came on the scene in the US just a few months ago in July 2011, and since then they have signed up 10 million users. Their integration with facebook, announced in October, brought them 7 million of those. While there was some negative response initially to the fact that they were requiring a facebook login in order to listen to Spotify, it now looks like that was a wise decision for them that fueled fast listener growth.
These new innovations will bring them still more listeners as partners begin to use their catalog of about 15 million songs as a resource. David Goodman, President of CBS Music Interactive, which owns Last.fm called the new Spotify platform “the next dashboard”, meaning it will become ubiquitous as a streaming song platform. Those are big words, but it’s not hard for me to see how a small webcaster could easily tire of reporting and paying their own royalties and decide to curate lists within Spotify instead. Then Spotify becomes an on-demand service AND an endless number of interesting, programmed and curated channels with this move. (Ek said there is no revenue share model for partners right now, but also said they are in the very early days.)
This is a big idea. They’ve got a lot of momentum built up already from their recent launch and facebook integration, and this will bring them even more. Score one – advantage Spotify…
