February 2019

Study of Spotify’s inner workings

28/02/2019

Spotify Teardown is a study of Spotify’s inner workings and provides an academic investigation into streaming music. The research was carried out by 5 Swedish academics to show the inner workings of Spotify that traces the transformation of audio files into the streamed experience. Published by MIT Press on the 19th March 2019, the team of five researchers borrowed the notion of ‘teardown from reverse-engineering processes and disassembled Spotify’s product and the way it is […]

Amazon Alexa gives access to 350 radio stations in India

27/02/2019

Amazon Alexa gives access to 350 radio stations in India partnering with TuneIn and myTuner to offer local Indian and radio stations from across the world. Listeners can tune in to live broadcast of 17 All India Radio stations in 14 Indian languages including All India Radio – Vividh Bharati, FM Gold, and Tamil. Amazon has also partnered with TuneIn and myTuner offering radio stations from across the world including BBC Radio 2, ESPN Radio […]

Spotify extends lead over Apple Music

25/02/2019

Spotify extends lead over Apple Music with paid subscriptions now reaching 96 million against Apple’s estimated 50 million, according to Statista. When Apple Music was launched in June 2015, industry experts thought that Apple’s enormous installed base of iOS devices together with the company’s legendary flair for marketing and branding would see it come out top in the competition with Spotify. However, Spotify has proved to be the more innovative moving quickly into new markets, […]

Qobuz releases CarPlay app

23/02/2019

Qobuz releases CarPlay app available now in beta on the AppStore. The beta version has a number of restrictions such as only being able to use Qobuz on CarPlay with albums, tracks and playlists pre-imported to your iPhone’s ‘offline library’. You can also play cached music by initially selecting ‘show cache music’ which can be enabled in the options menu under ‘storage’. How to use CarPlay with Qobuz Make sure you are in a location […]

French radio success with local content quotas

22/02/2019

French radio success with local content quotas as for the first time in 13 years, a French song by Maître Gims and Vianney reaches 1st place of the Radio Top 100. French radio has to meet quotas for locally produced content which is overseen by the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA) – an independent public authority established in 1989 to guarantee the exercise of broadcasting freedom. The CSA is responsible amongst other things ‘for ensuring […]

Spotify ends 2018 in the black

20/02/2019

Spotify ends 2018 in the black with Q4 2018 outperforming expectations and delivering operating income, net income and free cash flow numbers which were all positive. The number of monthly active users (MAU) grew 29% year on year to 207 million which was above expectations mainly due to improved subscriber retention and strong growth in Latin America and emerging regions. Despite improved performance in every area and strong forecast growth in 2019 the company is […]

Young people in Spain are adopting streaming over physical formats

70% of Spanish music sales are now digital

19/02/2019

70% of Spanish music sales are now digital with streaming growing by 50% to reach 2.3 million users according to figures released by Promusicae, the Spanish record industry association. Streaming now accounts for 90% of the sector’s digital revenues ending the year with a small increase in sales. The growth in streaming is being driven by younger consumers taking up streaming subscriptions rather than buying physical formats. Provisional sales figures for 2018 show that revenues […]