Monday Jay-Z’s newly acquired TIDAL streaming music service pulled back the curtain on its relaunch, but just a little bit. As predicted, TIDAL is adding a compressed music service, competing with the likes of Spotify, to accompany its lossless CD-quality HiFi service. The compressed service is $9.99 a month, while the lossless version is double […]
When last I meditated on my recent experiences at SXSW in Austin, I was commenting on the lack of interest in AM/FM among musicians with whom I spoke. It is unclear to me, however, whether those artists were representative of the broader creative population. I am certain that staffers and deejays from NPR and the […]
When I scheduled my visit to North Central College’s radio station WONC-FM, I had no idea that a spring snow storm would hit. Undeterred, my husband I and embarked on a road trip through the Chicago suburbs on Monday, March 23rd to see the recently-named IBS College Radio Station of the Year. (more…)
In this week’s Radio Survivor Bulletin (are you subscribed yet?), I wrote an extended piece about college radio in the 1970s. At the time, campus-only carrier current stations were HUGE and some large universities even had multiple stations serving different dorms. The music industry was taking notice of college radio and a 1971 Billboard article […]
This week was a little bit busier for low power FM (LPFM) hopefuls. Twenty one groups were granted permits this week and 17 applications were dismissed, bringing the grand total of granted applications to 1,785 from the fall 2013 application window. (more…)
Rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z is throwing his hat into the streaming music arena with his acquisition last week of the Swedish company Aspiro and its two music services WiMP and TIDAL. WiMP is a Spotify competitor only available in Scandinavia, Germany and Poland. TIDAL is a CD-quality lossless service available in 31 countries world-wide, including […]
Take our poll on whether AM/FM radio still helps young musicians. After sitting through the Celebrity Economy in Music panel at last week’s SXSW, which featured economist Paul Krugman and the principals of Arcade Fire, I sat down outside and collected my thoughts. If touring is overwhelmingly the main way that artists make their money, […]
It’s not like we didn’t see it coming. The FCC is taking flak from Congress about its Open Internet rules passed last month, and this week the first wave of lawsuits has been filed. The United States Telecom Association is the biggest plaintiff, representing the nation’s largest broadband providers. The other suit was filed by […]
In the world of streaming music services Amazon Prime Music is more like the bubble gum in a pack of baseball cards. It’s not the reason you buy the pack, but you’ll probably chew it anyway. Introduced last year, Prime Music serves up commercial-free, on demand music to subscribers to Amazon Prime, which also has […]
Later this week, the annual Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference kicks off in Montreal, Quebec. This year’s conference is loaded with sound and radio scholarship, which is a great indicator of the state of radio and sound studies in academia today! (more…)
