A report shows that music subscription service Spotify continues to grow at a rapid pace. The growth validates Spotify’s business model but is also inviting a growing cluster of rivals. Read more at paidContent »
Addicted to Pandora’s free music service on your mobile phone? If the music cuts out, here’s why: Mobiles will be capped at 40 hours per month although you can pay a buck to keep on rockin’. Read more »
After long last, Spotify’s music service comes to Microsoft Windows Phone 8 smartphones. After the download, Spotify offers a free 48 hour trial with no credit card information needed. Read more »
A year after it launched as a skunkworks project inside music data company The Echo Nest, trendy social music site This Is My Jam is “looking at options” for going independent — as well as getting ready to launch some fun new site exploration features. Read more »
Google launched a free music match service for MP3 files in Europe in October and now brings the same service to the U.S. Apple and Amazon also provide the same, but charge for the convenience of not having to upload a music library. Read more »
Rhapsody’s new Android app features a bit of a different take on content curation: The app keeps track of what you like to listen to at certain times of the day, and then suggests you those exact songs at the right time. Read more »
Google Play users won’t have to upload every single song to their music locker anymore. Google just introduced its own version of iTunes Match, which identifies songs on a user’s hard drive and then unlocks them in the cloud. The main difference: Google’s version is free. Read more »
Radionomy relaunched Tuesday with a radically simplified website that offers access to more than 6000 individual radio stations, programmed by DJs and music enthusiasts. The company also officially entered the target the U.S. market and now wants to compete with radio services like Live365.com. Read more »
Spotify’s conversion rate isn’t bad: Out of 15 million active users, more than 4 million are paying subscribers. That number may soon increase thanks to Android support for Spotify radio, which is ad-supported and offers unlimited playback of Spotify’s entire digital music catalog. Read more »
Google has improved its movie and TV show offerings in Google Play; great for the new Nexus 7 tablet and Nexus Q streaming device. But you’re out of luck for video playback — rentals or purchases — if you have a Google-powered Chromebook. What gives? Read more »
Record collectors have been using Discogs.com to catalog and trade their wares for years. Now, much of that user-submitted data is finding its way to Spotify and other online music platforms, thanks to a partnership between Discogs and the music data provider The Echo Nest. Read more »
While Spotify has been churning out news, one question kept popping up: when are we going to get an iPad app? Well, Spotify is finally obliging, giving premium users a polished iPad version that it hopes can rule the living room. Read more »
Spotify is partnering with Coca Cola in a deal that it says will expand its international reach, giving it a boost similar to the way Facebook integration has supercharged usage. Coke will use Spotify to power its music outreach and will help promote the service internationally. Read more »
Saavn has been hailed as India’s Spotify. But with much of its customer base being in India and much of its catalog being Bollywood fare, things work a little different for the company. One example: Saavn has high hopes for its Blackberry and Symbian apps. Read more »
Mobile handset maker HTC has bought music subscription service MOG, according to a rumor reported by Business Insider. We haven’t been able to verify the rumor, but have also heard that term sheets have been going back and forth between the two companies. Read more »
Although it’s now simpler and more efficient than ever to create a compelling music destination, only a few digital music outlets today are truly successful. Merlin’s CEO Charles Caldas explains why so many services fail, and so few succeed. Read more »
Spotify is claiming that its long-delayed launch in Germany has been caused by internationalization issues — an attempt to distract from the difficulties of negotiating with the country’s notoriously hard music rights collector, GEMA. Read more »
Sequoia’s $10m round of funding for concert database Songkick puts a lot of pressure on the London startup. But CEO Ian Hogarth says he’s ready to cope with everything that’s coming — and plans to make his site the hub for music on the web. Read more »
iLike was once the most popular music application of Facebook, with close to 10 million active users generating 1.5 billion page views per month. On Tuesday, it finally shut down. Its demise proves once again that online music is a tough business to be in. Read more »
I took a look at Rdio’s new Android client and it’s a vast improvement. The application is a full re-write, rather than an update, and better supports Android 4.0 smartphones and tablets, allowing the app to be controlled on a device’s lock screen. Read more »
A new Pandora competitor called Raditaz combines customized online radio stations with location. Users can see what stations others are listening to in their neighborhood and even geotag stations specific to their gym or office. Raditaz built the service with a team of just seven. Read more »
Spotify is relaunching its Spotify Radio feature, enabling unlimited channels and skipping and more targeted channels in a bid to better take on Pandora. The improvements are limited to the desktop for now, but a mobile version is coming soon. Read more »
The web has been abuzz with speculations about a mystery Spotify event next week, with many arguing the service will launch a download store. But given its recent growth spurred by Facebook, I’d argue a web-based player would make more sense. Read more »
Google launched its music service Wednesday, giving end users access to a catalog of 13 million songs. The service also works in sync with Google’s music cloud locker and offers sharing features through Google+. Artists will be able to sell their music directly through the service. Read more »
It’s time to say good-bye to the cat: The announced acquisition of Napster by Rhapsody means that the Napster brand will cease to exist. Company’s staff will be laid off in December, its offices shuttered, and the future of its international operations is undecided. Read more »
Spotify had a fairy tale beginning as a startup. Like some of its peers, Spotify is changing how we consume media. And that change is putting the service at odds with indie labels and artists who believe that Spotify is going to leave them penniless. Read more »
Free, digital content has shattered long-established ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry, and publishers must now find new ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly. That includes everything from more-flexible paywalls to borrowing the business models of industries like online gaming and music. Read more »
One thing that iTunes has over Spotify’s online music service is its wireless connectivity to the Apple TV. But it is actually possible to get the same kind of connectivity with Spotify, and use it from any room in your house. Here’s how. Read more »
We all have our secret Lady Gaga songs tucked away in our playlist or the 80s’ Monster Ballads that are loved rather than laughed at, so now as Spotify comes to the U.S., here’s how to avoid sharing the skeletons in your musical closet. Read more »
EXCLUSIVE: Clio might not be the most familiar name in the world of music recommendation — but its system is one of the most intelligent. And now the Philadelphia service has strengthened its hand by signing a major deal to provide its services to Hollywood’s biggest studios. Read more »
As Turntable.fm has shown, a new era of social music may be upon us, one that is less about scaling wide, but more about going deep. The third era of social music is about immersion as sites add more immediacy and intimacy to the experience. Read more »
Nearly eleven years after Tim Westergen and his colleagues started Pandora, it began trading on the public markets. Westergen has been through hell and back and his story is no different from any entrepreneur who dares to try to capture lightning in a bottle. Read more »
TuneIn, a free app for Windows Phone 7 handsets, streams Internet radio from more than 50,000 radio stations over Wi-Fi or a mobile broadband connection. The application can also make use of a handset’s internal FM radio, which saves battery life and data plan use. Read more »
Spotify, a fast growing Swedish online music start-up has taken Europe by the storm. Today, it announced that it now has a million paying subscribers, making it one of the rare bright lights in the world of paid content and online music. Read more »
In music industry parlance, a “360 deal” is a record contract in which a label takes a cut of ticket and merchandise sales as well as recorded music revenues. Streaming music provider Spotify wants to become a 360-degree channel for downloads, ticketing, merchandise and direct-to-fan marketing. Read more »
A year or two ago, MOG didn’t seem like a potentially disruptive force in the music subscription arena. But what started as a music-blogging network has become a full-fledged on-demand streaming service whose transformation came about when a major-label project failed to get off the ground. Read more »
Spotify has named Oskar Stål, who spent eight years at mobile commerce service provider mBlox, as CTO. Stål’s arrival comes just over a month after the abrupt but reportedly amicable departure of Andreas Ehn as CTO. Read more »
Before web music service Spotify launched, serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky called it “Joost for music.” Indeed, Spotify would be well-advised to learn from Joost’s mistakes — or it could wind up suffering a similar fate. Read more »
The theory that mobile applications will boost interest in music subscriptions has its first test subject in RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, which released an iPhone app in early September that has since been downloaded more than half a million times. Most of those downloaders were non-subscribers testing out […] Read more »
Rhapsody, the music subscription service, says its free iPhone application has been downloaded more than 330,000 times since its launch Sept. 9, making it the No. 2 music app in the iTunes store. But while that’s an enthusiastic display of interest in a fairly moribund music […] Read more »
