New Smart Audio Report explores Covid-19 smart speaker habits
US radio group NPR and research firm Edison Research have published their latest Smart Audio Report, which usually has plenty of interesting data on digital listening habits in the US. The new edition, for spring 2020, has added interest because it’s been asking people how Covid-19 and its accompanying lockdown has changed those habits. 26% of […]
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Source: Music ally
Pandora founder Tim Westergren launches livestreaming service Sessions
Streaming service Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren stepped down as CEO and from its board of directors in June 2017. Since then, he’s been a venture partner at VC firm Khosla Ventures; joined the board of AI music startup Popgun; and founded a new company called Next Music. What’s that? Well, it’s the firm behind a new […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple Music paid subscriptions are ‘up strong double-digits’
Apple published its latest quarterly financials yesterday, for the first quarter of 2020 (the company’s fiscal Q2). Services were once again a standout category for the company, setting another quarterly record of $13.3bn in revenues. There was also an announcement (of sorts) about Apple Music’s growth within that segment. “Apple Music and cloud services, both set […]
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Source: Music ally
Canadian firm VoxTonePro files lawsuit over Spotify Ad Studio
Spotify is facing another lawsuit, although this one isn’t focusing on licensing or royalties. Instead, a Canadian company called VoxTonePro is accusing the streaming service of stealing its trade secrets, and using them to build its Spotify Ad Studio – that’s the tool that brands and businesses can use to create their own audio ads to […]
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Source: Music ally
OpenAI reveals its latest music-generating AI: Jukebox
OpenAI is the non-profit artificial intelligence company backed by (among others) tech mogul Elon Musk. Just under a year ago it showed off Musenet: “a deep neural network that can generate 4-minute musical compositions with 10 different instruments, and can combine styles from country to Mozart to the Beatles”.
Now it’s following up with a new system called Jukebox: “A neural net that generates music, including rudimentary singing, as raw audio in a variety of genres and artist styles.”
It’s going to ruffle many feathers within the music community.
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Source: Music ally
Amazon Music’s Steve Boom talks growth, Alexa, playlists and more
This is the second part of our Amazon Music piece, based on a face-to-face interview in February that was being held for our Q1 2020 report in early April.
Given the impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic since February, we had a follow-up conversation with Amazon Music VP Steve Boom. Part one is based on that interview, but everything below is from the February meeting.
In mid-January, Amazon Music announced that it now had more than 55 million streaming customers, with its VP of music Steve Boom telling the Financial Times that “nearly all” of them were paying for a subscription, rather than using the ad-supported tier.
The figure included Amazon’s full range of subscription tiers, from the Prime Music service bundled into an Amazon Prime membership through its single device plan, Amazon Music Unlimited, and Amazon Music HD.
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Source: Music ally
Amazon Music’s Steve Boom talks Covid-19, MusiCares and lockdown listening trends
“It’s been very gratifying to see the music community pull together… It’s gone really well: we’ve raised over $10m now. Unfortunately, the need is enormous. We’ve had over 10,000 applications for aid already, and we’re only six weeks into this thing. The crisis is going to be long lasting…”
Steve Boom is VP of Amazon Music, but he’s also chairman of the board at MusiCares Foundation, the charitable affiliate of the Recording Academy, which has taken a central role in the Covid-19 coronavirus relief efforts for musicians and the music community in the US.
Boom has been working with Recording Academy chairman Harvey Mason Jr. since “very early on” in the current crisis on the MusiCares Covid-19 Relief Fund, which has already been backed by an array of major labels and publishers, digital music services, collecting societies and other industry entities.
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Source: Music ally