Pandora’s own Tim Westergren took to the blogosphere on Friday to urge support for a new performance royalty reform bill freshly introduced to Congress: Representative Jason Chaffetz’s (R-UT) Internet Radio Fairness Act. The proposed law would correct an “unfair royalty system that forces us to pay massive licensing costs,” the founder of the music streaming […]
I’ve been writing a lot about Internet radio and mobile devices these days. But sometimes I think there are advantages to tuning in on my PC laptop instead. Advantage number one: avoiding monthly charges. Most radio social networking applications on your PC are free with advertisements, including Last.fm. But want to get Last on your […]
Over the last two years, Paul Riismandel, Jennifer Waits, Helen Yamamoto, and I have posted various mentions and lists of popular songs about radio (Paul, Jennifer, Jennifer, Helen, and me). Many of you wrote in with your own personal favorites. After noting one of Spotify’s best features—letting subscribers publish playlists on the web via embedded HTML—I […]
My colleague Paul Riismandel has been warming up to the Spotify music service, of late, and gave it a pretty decent review in a recent post. Paul also mentioned to me that Spotify has been advertising itself as a “goldmine” for a wide variety of formats, including classical music. This aroused my attention, since I […]
There’s controversy at NPR over the service’s latest 100 best-ever teen novels list. 75,220 NPR listeners voted for their favorite young adult novels. The list quickly drew fire for its lack of diversity. “Only two—yes, two—books on the list are written about main characters of color,” noted reading and English teacher Shaker Laurie in a […]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is “in talks” to obtain licenses for what amounts to a Pandora-like streaming music service. All Things Digital says it’s true, or as ATD’s Peter Kafka puts it, “Industry sources I’ve talked to say that’s correct.” I’m sympathetic to this reader comment on the WSJ piece: “Oh great. […]
As talk radio listeners know, Glenn Beck has been on a tirade against American Airlines for two days now (here and here). Beck says an AA staffer was rude to him on first class: “My flight attendant nearly — merely barked the word ‘breakfast’ when he came to me. When others were politely asked if […]
San Diego based radio investment guy Ray Lucia faces Security and Exchange Commission charges that his seminars left attendees with a “false sense of comfort” about his “Buckets of Money” retirement strategy. The SEC complaint Order questions whether Lucia’s schemes are properly “backtested,” which the agency defines as “the process of evaluating a strategy, theory, […]
I have to admit that the following observation, offered by Notre Dame radio analyst Allen Pinkett, got my attention. “I’ve always felt like, to have a successful team, you gotta have a few bad citizens on the team,” the former star running back told The McNeil and Spiegel Show last week: “I mean, that’s how Ohio […]
As the great patent war between Samsung and Apple continues, I’ve started wondering which mobile operating system is better for radio listening: Apple’s iOS, which runs the iPhone and iPad, or the various Android flavors featured on Samsung devices and many other mobile phones. My tentative answer is that it is a bit of a […]
