Asia’s fragmented music fanbase and subscription habits may stand between Spotify and its total domination of the region, or at least so its competitors hope. The music streaming service recently launched in the Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. When we spoke to Spotify’s head of new markets in Asia-Pacific, Sriram Krishnan, he was evasive on how extensive the… → Read More
Music streaming service Spotify has finally come to Asia. Today, it announced that it would be launching in the cities of Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Its premium service, priced at $9.99 per month in the US, will also be a little cheaper in the region, with Malaysians getting the lowest price. Update: after turning on Asia, Spotify posted on its blog that it now has also turned on services… → Read More
A note of consolidation in the world of digital music: Rumblefish, a company that works with the likes of YouTube, Amazon, Vimeo, Facebook and Slideshare to let users add licensed soundtracks to their digital creations, is today announcing the acquisition of Catalogik, a platform to help find and monitor the use of specific digital tracks. → Read More
Music streaming may not be making much money right now, but that’s not stopping music streaming hopefuls from trying. The latest development comes from Deezer, which is announcing a series of new services based around its APIs to drive more users to its service. They include an affiliate marketing program; more social and gaming integration; and the ability to port apps made for the Deezer App… → Read More
Veteran streaming radio platform Pandora released its fourth quarter earnings today, in which it saw its fiscal 2013 revenue of $427.1 million, representing a 56 percent year-over-year increase, and fourth quarter revenue of $125.1 million, an increase of 54 percent year-over-year. In turn, mobile revenue for the fourth quarter grew 111 percent year-over-year to $80.3 million. → Read More
Just after reports peg Apple brass as meeting with Beats to discuss streaming music services, a new story in the New York Post today claims that the Mac maker is in talks with labels about such a service, but is already hitting a lot of resistance over its proposed terms. Apple initially offered 6 cents per 100 songs streamed, according to the Post’s sources, which is around half what Pandora… → Read More
Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Beats Electronics CEO Jimmy Iovine in L.A. in late February, according to a report from Reuters today. The news comes just as Beats project ‘Daisy,” a streaming music service built by Beats, is being spun off as a separate company by the audio electronics maker, with the help of a $60 million investment round. Apple was interested in Daisy, including its business plan… → Read More
Jon Irwin, President of Rhapsody, told me at SFMusicTech that smartphone technology – particularly the IOS and Android platforms – has enabled a radically new experience for music lovers. As Irwin explained, this shifts the industry’s business model from the sale of product to what he calls “streaming as a platform,” noting the increasing dominance of subscription services like Rhapsody, Spotify… → Read More
Senzari, the Miami-based Pandora competitor backed by $3 million in funding from 500 Startups and other angels, is making good on its recent acquisition of the Berlin-based streaming music app Wahwah.fm. The company is now spinning off its music efforts as a mobile-first streaming radio application, rebranded as just Wahwah. In the meantime, the Senzari web-based streaming service is being… → Read More
7digital, the streaming music company that offers a direct-to-consumer service but also partners with the likes of Samsung and Pure to power respectively its Music Hub and radio music services on connected devices like smartphones, tablets and music players, today announced a significant international expansion into the emerging markets of India, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and South Africa, where… → Read More
You may not be familiar with her name, but Judy Estrin has quietly become one of Silicon Valley’s most successful serial entrepreneurs and executives. She began her career working with Vint Cerf’s research group at Stanford University — the same one that played a central role in the development of the Internet. Since the early ’80s, she has founded seven technology companies, has served as the… → Read More
The battle for international users continues to heat up for streaming music services. Just this morning, Deezer announced expansions into developing markets in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Brazil, and now Rdio follows with news of its own – it’s going free. The company says it’s rolling out free web access internationally to all territories where it operates, except for Germany and Brazil. → Read More
Microsoft is doing a lot lately to unify services across its platforms, and Xbox Music, a scan-and-match cloud music locker that’s planned for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 is a big part of that. Now, it looks like that service might also become part of SkyDrive, making it available from any browser, according to a new report. → Read More
Streaming music startup 8tracks is officially relaunching its iPhone application today, which offers a much-needed (and really well done) user interface revamp. For those who remember the earlier version of the app out last year, it will be as if you’re getting a brand-new application altogether. 8tracks 2.0, as the update is being called, introduces a number of new components, including… → Read More
TuneIn‘s online radio service that lets people listen to music, sports and news on their smartphones and on the web, just announced that it is now available on 200 different distribution platforms. The platforms include everything from smartphones, home entertainment systems, connected TV and – most recently – connected cars. Indeed, the 200th platform the company announced today is Tesla’s new … → Read More
In an attempt to watch their development, I’ve been keeping tabs on a small Columbus OH startup called Cannon.fm. I first talked with them several weeks ago before their product launch, and have been interviewing them occasionally, to see how they are adapting, changing, improving, revising their business model and product.
That product — a streaming radio iOS app called Cannon.fm that is… → Read More
Music streaming service Spotify is rolling out a new feature for U.S. users today, which looks like a direct swipe at Pandora: it’s introducing a free mobile radio service. The update is only available in the iOS versions of the app at present (iPhone and iPad), but gives free users access to unlimited music from Spotify’s catalog of 16 million songs. → Read More
Intrigued upon hearing about these StartupWeekend vets, I managed to track down Cannon.fm founders Ryan Cox and Mat Marcum in order to get a little more info about their interesting and imminently launching streaming music startup.
Cannon.fm is like a lot of other streaming music services out there — Pandora and Spotify come to mind — however this lean team of eight or so have an… → Read More
Despite fears that streaming access cannibalizes sales, classical music record label X5 tells me when it launched an app within Spotify and saw streams of one album increase 412% in a month, that album’s iTunes sales shot up 50%. The Swedish label’s “The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music” soon reached #1 on the iTunes Classical charts, and broke into the iTunes Top 200 album charts for the… → Read More
There are two main complaints that always crop up whenever you mention Pandora: its music catalog is too small and it’s not available outside the U.S. That’s room enough for another startup to move into the streaming radio space, at least according to the folks at the new Miami-based streaming music startup Senzari. The service recently launched into private beta in the U.S. and Brazil, with plans… → Read More
Streaming music service Rdio from Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, is today launching two new music gifting options – physical gift cards and online credits. Consumers will be able to purchase the virtual gift card options in $10, $25, $50 and $100 values or in user-selected amounts. Meanwhile, physical cards in the $10 and $25 values will be sold in over 600 Target retail stores… → Read More
Quick Version: In a world chock full of streaming music devices, the Philips Streamium NP1100 blends into the crowd as a straightforward, easy-to-use network device. → Read More
A recent update to the net-connected Chumby device adds Pandora Radio as an option under the Music menu. Check out the above video for a quick demonstration of everything. It’s pretty straightforward – you’ll need to reboot your Chumby to get it to show up initially but once that’s done, you’ll find the Pandora option amongst the other available music sources. Then, simply enter your… → Read More
As a current TiVo and former Rhapsody subscriber, the idea of putting the two together intrigues me. What doesn’t intrigue me is paying $17 a month for TiVo and another $13 a month to use Rhapsody on it. I like the services and all but $30 a month seems a little steep, especially on top of the extortion money that I have to shell out to Comcast every month to rent (against my will) a… → Read More
We’ve all grown to love or hate the Zune in the last few months, but this here factoid may change your mind for the better if you’re apart of the latter group. The FM transmitter accessory for the Zune is meant to be used for your car stereo, but remember how the Zune has built in FM tuners? Has it clicked yet? You can tap into the frequency one Zune is transmitting via the FM transmitter on… → Read More
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