This is certainly an indicator of strong growth for internet radio and streaming services. Music royalties agency SoundExchange announced Tuesday that it ended the year collecting $292 million in royalty payments, up 17% from 2010. These royalties are paid by internet, satellite and cable TV music-only services for the right to play sound recordings, and […]
The other day I got a chance to see Lev Anderson and Chris Melzter’s wonderful documentary Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone at the Roxy Theater in San Francisco (trailer here). The film is a must see for anyone who wants to understand the post-disco music scene of the 1980s, with its eclectic mix of […]
The latest Roots Music Report is out, with data on roots bands getting airplay over radio stations in 2011. A lot of great women artists made top billing, including Alison Krauss & Union Station, Gillian Welch, and Lucinda Williams. But before we get to the rankings, here is how RMR describes itself: We compile radio […]
It only makes sense, really, that a medium often referred to as the aether should now be associated with the cloud. For those who haven’t been paying attention to the interwebs for the last couple of years, the cloud refers to idea of data being available on nearly ubiquitous servers, anywhere on the internet. Gmail […]
In an application accepted for filing by the FCC today, the owner of Santa Cruz public radio station KUSP is proposing the transfer of its Los Gatos translator at 90.3 FM to Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN) for use in rebroadcasting KDFC out of Angwin. According to an asset purchase agreement dated October 24, 2011, […]
I am bit of a stickler for audio quality and fidelity, as readers of my holiday gift guide and recent review of iHeartRadio may have sussed out. I’m reticent to call myself an audiophile because I’m not in pursuit of perfect audio nirvana, nor am I willing to spend the price of a new family […]
NPR asked its jazz listeners to rate their favorite songs, and gleaned from those responses a list of the top ten Jazz songs of all time[1]. What is interesting about the lists is not that they can establish what is “best,” whatever that might mean, or what is most popular (sales records, etcetera, show that). Looking at […]
Spotify‘s radio feature has so far seemed like an afterthought. Ostensibly it was based on the same idea as Pandora–you pick an artist and then Spotify picks songs by other artists that are similar. In my tests of the feature I found that the picks were pretty narrow and repetitive, with the same artist cropping […]
In last week’s post about iHeartRadio I focused much of my criticism on the sound quality of the service, or lack thereof. Since the debut of the compact disc in the 1980s digital has become nearly synonymous with good sound in the world of audio, but this is not always necessarily the case. When listeners […]
Last week I was in New York City for the CMJ Music Marathon. As always, the city was packed with bands and college radio DJs who were either in town to discover the next big thing or in town to be discovered. My focus, as it has been the past few times that I’ve attended, […]
