Spend a Day in May in Brussels with Us
Seriously folks, this could be the best investment you make all year in your business…
RAIN Summits, the premiere educational and networking events for the Internet radio and online audio industry, have announced the agenda for RAIN Summit Europe on May 23 in Brussels. The largest gathering of its kind in Europe, RAIN Summit Europe’s speaker list features a diverse list of web radio professionals from most countries and provides an excellent opportunity for the industry to share expertise.
RAIN Summit Europe will take place at the award-winning Hotel Bloom! in Brussels. The pan-European conference will be a day-long event, including thought provoking panels and presentations, insightful speakers, and engaging networking opportunities. Executives from many different European countries will share thoughts and ideas on the future of radio in the digital world.
RAIN Summit Europe will feature a list of speakers who are experts on various aspects of the field of streaming radio. Featured speakers at the conference in May include:
- David Deslandes, Deezer, France
- Simon Gooch, SBS Radio Sweden/Radio Play, Sweden
- James Cridland, Media UK, United Kingdom
- Ali Abhary, Spectrum Medya, Turkey
- Kjartan Slette, WiMP, Norway
- Christian Schalt, KISS FM/Radio Service Berlin, Germany
- Jan-Willem Brüggenwirth, 538Group, Netherlands
- Jean Pierre Cassaing, Havas Media, France
- Alain Reyes, NRJ Audio, France
- Joel Ronez, Radio France, France
- Steve Whilton, Last.fm, United Kingdom
- Caroline Grazé, NRJ, Germany
- Lubor Zoufal, Lagardère Active ČR, Czech Republic
- Paula Cordeiro, RTP, Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa, Portugal
“This agenda features an excellent complement of speakers from across Europe for a full day of panels, presentations and networking that endeavors to advance the business prospects for online audio,” said Jennifer Lane, President of RAIN Summits.
“In Europe today, Internet radio is an extremely vibrant and fast-growing media segment, with many of the top AM/FM broadcasters actively participating in the category along with a number of innovative entrepreneurs,” said Kurt Hanson, Publisher of RAIN: Radio and Internet Newsletter. “Last year’s RAIN Summit Europe, in Berlin, attracted a very high caliber of both speakers and attendees. This year, we’re excited to bring RAIN Summit Europe to the business capital of Europe, Brussels, and our agenda is shaping up to be our best yet!”
For more information on the agenda and speakers, visit the RAIN Summit Europe website
In The UK, Online Royalties Top Radio Royalties
In the UK, royalties from online services jumped by 32% last year, according to a report from PRS for Music, the Performing Right Society in the United Kingdom for composers, songwriters and music publishers. In fact, royalties from online services (including both streaming and downloading) now produces more revenue than radio, according to the new report.
The growth figure reported by the UK body is very similar to the percentage increase recently reported by SoundExchange, the licensing and collection organization for performance royalties in the US. The 2012 reported figure for royalties collected in the US in 2012 was $502.2 million, a 35% increase over the 2011 number.
What’s different of course is that in the US, performance royalties are not paid by broadcast radio services, so a comparison of online versus royalties from radio sources cannot be made.
On May 23 in Brussels we’ll be discussing the business of Internet radio and online audio at RAIN Summit Europe. View the speaker list and agenda here.
Pandora’s Audience, Awareness Up
Last week Pandora announced a significant milestone when they reached 200 million registered listeners. The fact that the number of registered listeners leapt from 100 million to 200 million in two years makes it still more impressive. Remember, Pandora’s user base is largely in the US, although they have recently expanded to a few other places such as Australia.
During a presentation last week at RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas, hundreds in the audience got a first look at updated trends in Infinite Dial 2013. Arbitron SVP Bill Rose and Edison Research President Larry Rosin offered some stats on Pandora, which has an impressive brand awareness recognition rate of 69% among adults 12+ in the US, a number that grew 10% since last year’s study. iHeartradio showed impressive brand awareness in the new study as well, with 45% brand recognition, a jump of almost 15% since last year.
The study also reported that close to half of the folks surveyed had downloaded the Pandora app onto their cellphone. This fact reveals the steam engine driving both the growth in audience and brand awareness for industry leader Pandora – their amazing success with mobile apps. As usage of smartphones and tablets has soared, Pandora’s been right out there in front, gaining front page status on those devices. 21% of cell phone owners now saying they have used their phone to listen to a stream in their car, yet another indication of the growing importance of mobile devices.
We’ll be discussing mobile devices, connected cars and a lot more again on May 23 in Brussels at RAIN Summit Europe. Have you registered? Hope to see you there!
Streaming Music On Smartphones Is Popular
Smartphone users like to use the devices to listen to music, and that’s a trend that is on the upswing, according to new information from NPD Group. 56% of smartphone users listen to music on their devices, with 39% of them doing that daily. Of those, they mostly listen to Internet radio (65%), but also stream on demand services like Spotify or Rhapsody (30%) and listen to their own music (it’s not clear whether it’s on the device or streamed from a cloud service) as well.
Music listening on mobile devices extends to tablets as well, with 40% of tablet users listening to music on those devices.
Ovi Music – on the go (Photo credit: Nokia RSA)
The Audio Consumption study done by NPD Group also observes that hardware of products that enhance wireless local playback of streaming services on mobile devices, like wireless speakers and headphones, are growing as a result of this trend. “With both local music storage and the ability to connect to any number of online music services, tablets and smartphones are actually contributing to a net increase in their owner’s use of internet radio and personal music collections,” said Ben Arnold, director of industry analysis at NPD. “As a result, we are seeing sales growth in products that compliment playback on mobile devices, particularly those that feature wireless local streaming.” Wireless streaming speaker sales more than tripled in 2012, and wireless headphones grew by 34 percent.
NPD Group’s Russ Crupnick is a featured speaker at the upcoming RAIN Summit West on Sunday April 7th at the Las Vegas Hotel. For more information and to register, click here.
Streaming Music On Smartphones Is Popular
Smartphone users like to use the devices to listen to music, and that’s a trend that is on the upswing, according to new information from NPD Group. 56% of smartphone users listen to music on their devices, with 39% of them doing that daily. Of those, they mostly listen to Internet radio (65%), but also stream on demand services like Spotify or Rhapsody (30%) and listen to their own music (it’s not clear whether it’s on the device or streamed from a cloud service) as well.
Music listening on mobile devices extends to tablets as well, with 40% of tablet users listening to music on those devices.
Ovi Music – on the go (Photo credit: Nokia RSA)
The Audio Consumption study done by NPD Group also observes that hardware of products that enhance wireless local playback of streaming services on mobile devices, like wireless speakers and headphones, are growing as a result of this trend. “With both local music storage and the ability to connect to any number of online music services, tablets and smartphones are actually contributing to a net increase in their owner’s use of internet radio and personal music collections,” said Ben Arnold, director of industry analysis at NPD. “As a result, we are seeing sales growth in products that compliment playback on mobile devices, particularly those that feature wireless local streaming.” Wireless streaming speaker sales more than tripled in 2012, and wireless headphones grew by 34 percent.
NPD Group’s Russ Crupnick is a featured speaker at the upcoming RAIN Summit West on Sunday April 7th at the Las Vegas Hotel. For more information and to register, click here.
SiriusXM Plays Defense With MySXM
While the connected dashboard is a concept that holds lots of promise for streaming stations, it’s no secret that it poses a point of concern for platforms that already own the dashboard real estate – like broadcast and satellite. Last year Sirius XM added 2 million net subscribers, and a lot of those came from folks who bought cars with the product already installed. That’s a big source of new audience for Sirius XM. While the streaming industry is busy declaring victory with every new car that integrates Pandora, iHeartRadio, Aha or TuneIn, Sirius is busy thinking about protecting its turf from the new dashboard.
Enter MySXM, the satellite company’s streaming option for listeners. CEO Jim Meyers positions the new streaming platform as a defensive move, pointing out that SiriusXM will have an advantage by offering both satellite and IP options in the dashboard. “Listeners also don’t need to constantly lean forward to create a tailored listening experience. They can just tune to the music channels they already like and adjust the channel’s unique slider controls and set them once for good or change them any time they want….This new feature will further enhance our IP offering, which has been greatly improved over the past year and now includes the ability to time shift up to five hours on many stations, start songs at the beginning when tuning to a music channel and the ability to play thousands of hours of talk and entertainment from over 300 shows from our library of on-demand content.
Though there is no official launch date for MySXM yet, information from the call yesterday was that the platform will be available across all platforms and devices.
SoundExchange Paid Artists Record Amount of Royalties Last Year
Royalty payments from SoundExchange set a record in 2012, and exceeded the previous year by 58%. Payments to artists for performance made by Internet radio, satellite radio and cable radio services hit $462 million. Payments for performances made by subscription services are not included in these figures.
“SoundExchange’s increasing annual royalty payments are a positive indication of where the industry is heading. As digital radio continues to grow, so should the amount that performing artists and rights owners receive for the use of their content,” said SoundExchange President Michael Huppe. “Our distribution represents another record-breaking year for SoundExchange, but more importantly, it means more money in the pockets of the creators of music. We’re optimistic about the industry’s future, and look forward to maximizing digital performance royalties for the people we serve and finding new ways to propel the music industry forward.”
To be accurate it’s important to understand that not all of this money ends up in the hands of ”creators of music.” According to Billboard, first, SoundExchange takes 5.3% off the top for administrative fees. After that, the “net” figure gets divided up as follows: record labels, or owners of the sound recording, get 50%. Performance artists get 45% and session musicians and backup singers get 5%.
Earlier this year it was estimated that Pandora was responsible for 37% of that record breaking number collected by SoundExchange. While SoundExchange doesn’t specifically report the figure they pay for performance royalties, they do report a “content acquisition fee”, which topped $182 million through their Q3 of 2012.
Pandora’s Conrad: We’re Pioneers
Streaming news at CES 2013 last week was all about integration into cars, with big announcements from Ford and JacAPPS, Pandora and Chrysler, Livio, Tunein, and lots of others. The news about Sprint and Nextradio is big as well.
Connected cars are a reality now, and Pandora has played a large part in that evolution. Pandora’s been concentrating on getting their service integrated into connected devices for a long time, and their efforts have had a very large impact. They’ve led a coordinated effort which can take a lot of credit for the high level of interest in connected cars at this year’s CES. Sure, lots of companies are enjoying the advantage of that increased buzz, that’s how it works – pioneers lead the way, open the doors, and others follow, and hopefully flourish.
I’ve said it before and I think it bears repeating – the Internet radio industry has benefitted enormously from having a giant like Pandora in the space. They’ve generated lots of buzz and innovation that others have and will continue to benefit from in terms of listeners as well as technology. This Techcrunch interview with Pandora CTO Tom Conrad offers a nice overview of where they have come from, and how they do it.
Nielsen Will Measure Pandora
News that Nielsen will purchase Arbitron is good news for online radio services like Pandora. Nielsen, which measures many media segments, already has a strong foothold in digital and cross platform measurement, not only in the US but globally. Yesterday’s announcement that they will purchase Arbitron was quickly followed by statements that they will measure online radio services like Pandora as well.
I call this excellent news. Arbitron, which has dallied in Internet radio measurement several times in the past, recently denied Pandora a place at the table when they sought to be measured alongside broadcast radio counterparts. Pressure from those broadcasters, who spend a lot of money with Arbitron, certainly appeared to be one of the reasons that the company decided to measure streaming only as an adjunct to broadcasts. That decision enraged advertising agencies as well as online only services.
I think Nielsen’s entry into radio and digital audio measurement would be an excellent thing for the marketplace. Their multi-media measurement platform and global footprint likely mean that broadcasters won’t be able to flex their muscle to influence company decisions that are better made with a broad perspective. Nielsen is a company that understands that today’s advertisers need measurement tools that can enable accurate media placement across many platforms and technologies. Folding radio into that mix can benefit radio as advertisers are able to view it as an important part of a larger multi media landscape.
TuneIn Predicted Outcome In Swing States With Their Data
In the states where the races for the presidential election were the closest, radio advertising made the difference. According to an article in Politico last week, both candidates used radio to target specific segments of the population, with Obama spending quite a bit more than Romney. The article, which is also very nicely summarized by Fred Jacobs in his blog, notes that the campaigns saw radio as a way to reach voters who were not extremely political and might not be tuning into polls on a daily basis. As well, radio ads were a strategy for reaching busy younger adult women who spend lots of time in the car tuning in.
A nifty infographic that TuneIn, the Internet radio portal, sent me shows that voters likely to favor Obama were indeed listening to radio. Radio was a key strategy for the campaigns in swing states, with the Obama campaign airing a series of tailored radio ads for eight key states, targeting Paul Ryan, including specific ads relevant for Virginia, Colorado, Florida and Nevada starting in August, and Romney using swing-state radio ads to knock President Obama over his ” bayonets and horses” quip during the final presidential debate.
TuneIn looked specifically at how many listeners were tuning into political talk programming during the month of October and found more listening to liberal (so-called) democratic programming. Indeed, their data, which they sent me on Monday, largely predicted the outcome in most of the key swing states…
