Pandora and other webcasters who fought for lower royalty rates a few years ago rejoiced when they achieved rates they thought would allow them to achieve profitability, back in 2009. Yet questions still surround the ability of webcasters such as the now-public Pandora to turn a profit, given that their payments to copyright holders increase at the…
Responding to complaints about its practice of limiting data plans it sold as “unlimited,” AT&T clarified the amount of wireless data its smartphone customers can use before it starts throttling their bandwidth this week. The new limits at which AT&T will slow down users’ bandwidth: 3GB per month for smartphone users or 5GB for subscribers…
Our article about the “unsexy” issue of offline playback — a feature that allows streaming apps to store music and video temporarily so you can play it on the go without impacting your wireless data plan — attracted a fair amount of attention earlier this week, so we decided to dig a little deeper. After…
The current crop of car stereos that work with apps mostly do so by interfacing with your smartphone. Observe, as we test cars capable of connecting to MOG and Pandora through an iPhone. In those cases, the car’s standard dashboard hardware controls the apps, and displays the content — albums, artists, songs, and so on…
The more the Consumer Electronics Show changes, the more it stays the same — and by “it,” we mean the internet-enabled refrigerator that can inevitably be found somewhere on the CES showroom floor. I’m half-convinced that these things only exist to give tech reporters a reliable oddity to write about each year as an example of…
Tired of listening to music on your lonesome? Facebook might have the answer. About a month ago, the social network built some “connective tissue” between music fans and the services they use to listen. At its most basic level, Facebook now lets you A) let your friends know what you’re listening to on supported music services, and…
We have a bone to pick with one aspect of Facebook’s new music initiative, but can’t find anything wrong with the way it will let people join each other on streaming radio stations to chat about what they’re hearing. Here’s how this will work: We are friends on Facebook. I am listening to a streaming…
With the release of Songza’s free iPhone and Android apps, fans of the socially-fueled playlist service can finally bring it anywhere. Songza — previously available as a web or Chrome app only — has been through many iterations. The current one includes stations that are hand-curated by other users. Funnily enough, you can’t listen to…
What music service isn’t overhauling itself in advance of Facebook’s big F8 music-sharing announcement on Thursday? Pandora, the most popular streaming radio destination in the country, just rolled out a soup-to-nuts overhaul of the web version of its service, which now runs on HTML5 instead of Flash, among other changes. According to Pandora CTO Tom…
Thanks to the DJ Jazzy Jeff and a free web app, we’re wondering why Darnell Jenkins is so important. How did we get here? First, Jazzy Jeff Townes made a whimsical video about his road manager Jenkins being the most important man in the world, and then he tweeted it. I follow Jazzy Jeff on Twitter, so the video was…
For bands, radio exposure has never been the end result. It’s always been the means. Whether to boost album or ticket sales, artists have traditionally seen the radio as a method for promoting a product or good. So has Joey Flores. Last year the Venice, CA, musician-turned-marketer launched Earbits, a site that masks direct marketing and…
If you run an FM radio station, you already have plenty to worry about: MP3 players, satellite radio, CDs, tapes, audiobooks, silent meditation, and anything else that might tempt listeners to look beyond the FM dial. However, the smartphone threat is in a class by itself. A recent study by the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents…
This week, Pandora is rolling out a new version of its popular internet radio service that doesn’t rely on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook: It is a social network — or at least it will be, when the new, faster-loading, HTML5-powered version of the site goes live. Pandora announced the service on Tuesday,…
In the month since we broke the news (to some anyway) about the hot new Turntable.fm group-listening music service, it has become the most talked-about development in digital music. By one unofficial count, over 140,000 people have turned themselves into avatars on Turntable.fm to DJ or listen to what someone else is playing. This is social music…
It’s not every day that writing about music apps means discussing a $2.6 billion initial public offering. Pandora’s IPO valued the company, whose customizable streaming radio service is used by approximately one out of every ten Americans, at $2.6 billion dollars, or $16 per share under the symbol “P.” As the chart above shows (via Google,…
