June 1, 2016
Spotify Revenue Breakdown

What Spotify’s Financials Tell Us About Streaming Audio Economics – Part 2

Yesterday, we explored the numbers behind Spotify’s tremendous growth in subscription and advertising revenue counterbalanced by its shrinking gross margins. Today, we will discuss where all of that money is going.
May 31, 2016
Spotify Gross Margin Per User

What Spotify’s Financials Tell Us About Streaming Audio Economics – Part 1

Spotify recently released data showing that it had surpassed $2 billion in revenue with an 8.7% net loss. However, these were far from the most interesting data points that became public. The near doubling of advertising revenue, the fall in effective monthly revenue per user and the contracting margins are noteworthy.
January 5, 2016
Radio-World-Interview-Pat-Higbie

The Future is Now: Radio World Interviews Pat Higbie on Industry Changes in 2016

With a new year upon us, Radio World interviewed CEO Pat Higbie on the future of Internet radio in 2016. As the Internet radio audience continues to grow, so will the interest of national advertisers. With a large amount of consumer attention and advertising revenue at stake, Higbie predicts competition will be fierce for both.
November 19, 2015
Spotify Eats Piracy

Part 2: Spotify and Other Streaming Services are Saving the Music Industry

Music industry revenue has fallen consistently since peaking in 1999. Some would like to claim that streaming music services are a cause of the decline even though they arrived well after the downward trend was established. However, there is ample evidence to suggest the industry revenue would have declined in the absence of streaming music services.
November 18, 2015
RIAA Music Unit Sales by Type

Part 1: Spotify and Other Streaming Services are Saving the Music Industry

A report issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research last month concludes that, “interactive streaming appears to be revenue-neutral for the recorded music industry.” The summary conclusions by the report authors, Luis Aguiar and Joel Waldfogel, don’t fit the industry trends prior to the study period or the math behind the data.
October 1, 2015
iHeartMedia, Triton Digital and Slacker Radio Represented at the XAPPmedia AWXII Panel

Audio Had a Big Year at Advertising Week AWXII

If you attended Advertising Week this year you couldn’t avoid sessions devoted to millennials, mobile and … audio. Yes, it’s true. Audio is back and hip enough to get attention at the advertising industry’s largest gathering.
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.
June 30, 2015

Apple is Onboard with Ad-Supported Listening After All

Apple Music launched this morning with an ad-supported listening service. Yes, there is the subscription service as well. Apple execs never said there wouldn’t be ads. They just didn’t mention it, so the media assumed the company was walking away from the 21-month ad-supported iTunes Radio experiment. We now know this is not the case.
June 24, 2015

Google Play Music Introduces Ads – no surprise there

Yesterday, Google Play Music quietly announced an ad-supported, free listening tier. This complements the $9.99 monthly subscription service offered since 2013. Most of the media chatter […]