It’s understandable for people to think that Spotify, the popular new kid on the online music industry block, as a competitor to Internet radio pioneer Pandora. But according to Pandora’s CTO and executive vice president of product Tom Conrad, the companies are actually friends, not foes. Read more »
Pandora went public,bit.ly/vI6vQC and Spotify successfully launched in the U.S. So which streaming music service tops them on smartphones? Try TuneIn Radio. Onavo, a mobile data management and compression service, has done some work to figure which are the most popular mobile music apps. Read more »
As media and entertainment went digital, many looked to the music sector as the canary in the coal mine. Digital comprises over 40 percent of consumer sales, but the whole market was worth only $5.9 billion in 2010. Even digital felt stagnant. But that’s changing. Read more »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mixberry Media is introducing a new ad platform aimed at inserting ads into the dead space in audio streams whenever a user switches channels or changes songs. The goal is to fill in the dead space in between songs with short brand messages. Read more »
Blazing fast networks, cheap silicon, always-on devices and a torrent of data will fundamentally change everything — how we consume media, how we work, and even who we are. We examined 10 areas that show how connectivity is profoundly changing the present and future of technology. Read more »
If streaming content is the future then I need a filter for my daughter. I realized this a few months ago after I searched for the movie Ponyo on Netflix and for weeks afterward saw the movie Pornography appear in the search-results screen. Read more »
Spotify wants to be in your living room, and it’s using the Boxee Box as a vehicle to reach your TV screen: Users of the music subscription service can now use a dedicated Spotify app on the device to access their favorite songs and playlists. Read more »
Being the most popular is not a good enough business model, it seems, when it comes to music mobile apps. Pandora, the music-streaming app,… Read more at paidContent »
Spotify is expanding into the world of TVs, partnering with WD for its first-ever connected TV experience for U.S. consumers. Music services have been hugely popular on set-top boxes and other connected devices, where consumers use Pandora almost as much as they use Netflix. Read more »
WD revamped their entry-level media player, giving it a new UI as well as integrated WiFi and access to Spotify. How does the music service look like on your big screen TV? Check out this episode of Cord Cutters to find out. Read more »
Red Hat’s planned $136 million purchase of Gluster should give the enterprise Linux leader a strong play in the cloud-inflected world of scale-out storage. This is the latest in a series of acquisitions by vendors trying to stake a claim in the storage of unstructured data. Read more »
Pandora (NYSE: P) is the latest company to stumble into the minefield of privacy lawsuits that are blowing up all over the tech industry. A… Read more at paidContent »
The mobile apps and services founders speaking at Mobilize 2011 this week gave some great advice for startups to follow. We picked out some of the best tips from Pandora, Flipboard, Instagram, Hipmunk, Formspring and Grey Area. Read more »
Pandora jailbroke an iPhone to get an early start on development for Apple’s iOS platform, the company’s CTO Tom Conrad revealed at Mobilize 2011 on Monday. These days, Conrad is equally excited about HTML5 and the impact it will have on connected devices. Read more »
Stitcher, the Pandora of Internet talk radio, has raised $10 million as it capitalizes on the opportunity in non-music streaming radio. The company will use the money to improve the product, enhance the platform for content providers and build out a direct ad sales force. Read more »
Tablets and smart phones are everywhere you turn but companies have been slow to redirect their ad spending to these new platforms. For now,… Read more at paidContent »
Pandora has established itself as the leading personalized radio service online. A new breed of services is now challenging Pandora by mashing up videos from around the web to personalized video streams, all without spending an arm and a leg on licensing. Read more »
The number of connected devices is steadily on the rise, but it’s not smartphones or computers that will lead us to the 50 billion connected devices expected by the year 2020. Rather, the Internet of Things — numerous smart objects that speak to the web and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The act of discovering new music videos and watching them in a leanback experience has not yet been made easy by distributors. That’s a problem Cull.tv hopes to solve, combining discovery and playback in a way that will position it as MTV for the digital generation. Read more »
Internet radio company Pandora reported the financial results of its first three months as a public company Thursday. The company confirmed that while it still has a long way to go before it reaches the listener levels of traditional radio, its ads are now just as valuable. Read more »
Europe’s web scene is now thriving, and we’ve compiled a list featuring some of the best and brightest European web startups — what we’re dubbing the GigaOM Euro 20. Depending on how closely you watch Europe’s online scene, some of these companies may be familiar to you. Others you may not have heard of. But all of them are worth watching closely. In this report, we profile the 20 startups that we feel best represent Europe’s current tech scene. We have organized our list around perception, and as lists go, it is intended to be a guideline rather than a rule book. It’s not exhaustive, and clearly, with such a diverse and vibrant continent as our playing field, it never could be. Companies mentioned in this report include GetJar, Huddle, Made.com and Songkick. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Bolstered by the success of its partnerships with services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, Rdio and Spotify,consumer electronics maker Sonos now wants to launch an API that would allow any music service to integrate with the Sonos platform. To me that seems like a great idea. Read more »
Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas has worked for the company for three decades and has seen the car become an electronics powerhouse, packed with chips that control everything from fuel injection to the chassis alignment. And that is only the beginning, he says in this video interview. Read more »
Best Buy is treading carefully into the connected TV space, introducing two new models of TVs that rely on a TiVo-powered user interface and Chumby apps for additional content. But savvy buyers might be disappointed by the lack of streaming services available on the new TVs. Read more »
When it comes to offering recommendations and personalized services to users sifting through mountains of digital content, online video could learn a few lessons from the music world. We’ve yet to see an offering for online movies and TV that mimics, say, Pandora’s highly personalized service. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The second quarter of 2011 was a fast-paced one for the connected consumer segment, with every sector of the digital media landscape — music, e-books, online video and gaming — experiencing significant events and changes. Media consumption, purchase and management continued its shift towards the cloud, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Spotify’s journey to the US has been highly anticipated almost since the on-demand music streaming service first launched in its native Europe in October 2008. But with all the Spotify buzz, let’s not forget about the great music services that were born here in the US. 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 »
UPDATED. Spotify U.S. is now in T-minus territory. A spokesperson for Spotify has confirmed that the popular European on-demand music streaming service will be available stateside on Thursday morning. GigaOM reported last month that Spotify’s U.S. launch would occur in mid-July. Read more »
For once, the biggest news in social media and real-time technologies didn’t come from Facebook. Rather, it was Google that, at the end of the second quarter, introduced an innovative collection of technologies, under the Google+ label. Another big headline was the return of digital music: Pandora filed a successful IPO, and Google and Apple unrolled cloud-based music offerings. Meanwhile, other social networks generated valuable lessons about technology and business strategies. LinkedIn went public, while Myspace was sold. And Apple essentially appointed Twitter its mobile social network infrastructure supplier. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Skype, Groupon, Turntable.fm and Amazon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Recent developments in the vehicle industry suggest that 2011 could be the year of the car as a major platform for apps. From BMW’s support for Apple’s iPod Out feature to the emergence of Nokia’s Terminal Mode, a system that integrates mobile applications and the car, automakers and app developers are jumping on board the in-vehicle app movement. This report examines that landscape, its major players and their offerings, and how the market is shifting from device to car and, eventually, to the cloud. Increased broadband speeds, electronic vehicles and social apps such as those powered by Twitter will play major roles on this journey. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Ford, BMW, Geely, Nissan and Google. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Last week Om broke a big story on Facebook’s plans for music. But is music Facebook’s next billion-dollar business? It will be hard for the company to cash in big on music. Here are three reasons why. Read more »
Pandora finally went public last week, and with its focus on radio, the company has a better chance for mass adoption than most other digital music services. While it may be losing money now, here are a few steps it could take to raise revenues. 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 »
Will huge returns on social media investments — like Groupon, LinkedIn or Pandora — help make up for underperforming greentech investments in a venture firm’s portfolio? If so, perhaps this gives firms time — and wiggle room — to keep up their cleantech investing. Read more »
Tim Westergren’s Pandora is going to go public later this week. His story is fascinating and ultimately inspiring, with several simple yet fundamental lessons to be learned: the importance of not giving up, taking risks and — the biggest of them — making your luck. Read more »
Pandora has boosted the price it plans to charge for its stock, a move that likely has a lot to do with the frenzy of interest in tech issues following the Groupon IPO — but will that rising tide of enthusiasm lift all boats, or swamp them? Read more »
Apple’s iCloud product poses a threat and an opportunity for ISPs. The product — which will deliver music and photo content on demand — is an acknowledgement that people are ready to stream content rather than store it on local hard drives. This has huge repercussions for ISPs. Read more »
