April 13, 2016
Streaming Music Industry Numbers

What Streaming Music Subscription Numbers Reveal About Ad-Supported Listening

A recent Digital Music News headline claimed, “There Are Nearly 90 Million People Paying for Streaming Music.” Its numbers add up to 87.5 million if you buy into two assumptions. First, that Apple Music will shortly grow from 11 to 15 million subscribers. Second, you must buy into the conclusion that Satellite subscribers are streaming subscribers.
January 19, 2016
Ad-Supported Apple Music Goodbye Letter

Apple Music Shuttering Ad-supported Service, An Opportunity Emerges

Apple announced Friday that it would be shuttering the ad-supported listening service within Apple Music. Is this a matter of Apple learning what business works best for music or a foreshadowing of what Apple Music subscribers will face if that service doesn’t meet expectations?
October 26, 2015
Pat Higbie MediaPost Article

Pat Higbie for MediaPost: Apple Music Shows Future Of Streaming Is Ad-Supported

Today, MediaPost published a featured editorial from XAPPmedia CEO Pat Higbie for its Mobile Marketing Daily section. In the article, Pat discusses Apple Music's future now that the trial period is over for some 15 million people.
July 8, 2015
Nielsen Data - Online Music Reaches Critical Mass in 2014

Nielsen Data Confirm Listener Time Shift to Ad-Supported Online Audio

RAIN News reported last week on an EDMbiz presentation by Nielsen Vice President Tatiana Simonian showing further confirmation of the listener migration to online listening. It also confirmed that ad-supported listening is the dominant choice of consumers.
July 1, 2015

AdExchanger: XAPPmedia’s Pat Higbie & Pandora’s Tim Westergren on Apple Music

With the release of Apple Music and Beats 1 yesterday, there is still much speculation on Apple's revenue model. AdExchanger's Liz Rowley interviewed several leaders in the industry to get their take on the future of subscription-based vs. ad-supported streaming music services, including XAPPmedia's Pat Higbie.
June 18, 2015

What Wasn’t Said at the Apple Music Debut

There has been a lot of coverage about the Apple Music presentation last week at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). However, it’s tough to report on what wasn’t said. There were a number of obvious questions that weren’t answered by the Apple Music executives in the debut presentation. I assume that was intentional.
June 10, 2015
Spotify Subscriber Numbers

Spotify Reaches 75 Million Active Users, Subscriptions Grow

This morning, Spotify released some new numbers in terms of 75 million active users and 20 million subscribers. Just over one year ago, Spotify announced 40 million active users of which 10 million were subscribers.
April 23, 2015

Internet Radio Benefits from Advertising and Subscriptions

Traditional music ownership models benefited tremendously from the ubiquitous ad-supported listening on broadcast radio. Ad-supported listening on Internet radio is the logical complement to the on-demand subscription model and will be the much larger platform for music exposure to consumers and a larger revenue source for artists.
March 31, 2015
What is the most important trend in streaming audio for 2015-2016?

Advertising Top of Mind for Internet Radio

What do industry insiders think are the most important issues and trends facing Internet radio and streaming services? Advertising. You can see this clearly in answers to two of the questions from a recent survey of over 200 people working in the industry.