UK Archives

Top 25 UK podcasts for Q2 2023

25/09/2023

The Top 25 UK podcasts for Q2 2023 chart according to Edison Podcast Metrics has been published by Edison Research. Edison Podcast Metrics UK, the only podcast measurement service that measures the relative audience size and demographics of all podcasts and podcast networks in the UK. The Edison Podcast Metrics Top 25 UK Podcasts of Q2 2023 list is derived from data collected continuously during the second quarter of 2023, interviewing 2,273 weekly podcast consumers ages 15 and […]

60North Radio

20/06/2023

60North Radio is an internet radio station broadcasting mainly indie music based in the Shetland Islands way up in the north of the UK. Started in 2004 as a local information station it had 6 low power FM transmitters by 2005 but by 2014 the harsh local weather had destroyed them all. Now the station is internet radio only and broadcasts a CD Quality lossless FLAC stream, 48kbps and 256kbps AAC streams and a 320kbps […]

UK music industry pledges to improve streaming metadata

02/06/2023

UK music industry pledges to improve streaming metadata although it appears that the focus is on the commercial with little said over the other aspects of information tagging. The voluntary agreement is the work of the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) chaired working group of industry experts, who met throughout 2022. This initiative forms part of the UK Government’s programme of work to address issues identified by the DCMS Select Committee’s Inquiry into the Economics of Music Streaming. The […]

TIDAL to support HiRes FLAC

15/04/2023

TIDAL to support HiRes FLAC was the surprise announcement from Jesse Dorogusker, CEO of TIDAL in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on reddit at the beginning of the week. When asked about MQA he gave the following reply: “So many questions about MQA and hi-resolution audio. I hope we don’t spend all of our time on audio format details, but it’s an AMA and you’re asking. TIDAL has cared about high quality and even […]

Streaming is benefitting more artists

08/04/2023

Streaming is benefitting more artists with streaming success spread across many more artists compared to the CD era according to recent research by the BPI. Based on Official Charts data, the findings show that the 10 leading streaming artists made up just 4.9% of the audio streaming market in the UK last year. This compares to the top 10 artists in 2007, when CD was the leading format, making up 10.9% of that year’s artist […]

MQA goes into administration

08/04/2023

MQA goes into administration, the UK’s equivalent to Chapter 11 in the US but is continuing to trade as usual. Recently the company announced the creation of a new HiRes wireless codec originally called MQAir which was recently renamed to SCL6. However, this does not seem to have set the audio world alight with many industry pundits sceptical about another lossy wireless codec to join the likes of aptX, LDAC, and LHDC – none of […]

Draft media bill promises more British content

04/04/2023

A draft media bill promising more British content on UK media has been published by the UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The principal aims of the bill are: To bring Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ under new Ofcom rules and ensure public service broadcasters’ on-demand services are easy to discover on smart TVs and streaming sticks New reforms to guarantee access to UK radio on smart speakers and cut red tape […]