Back in October 2019 I published a response to the breathless news reported across the tech, music and popular press that “vinyl outsold CDs” for the very first time. While true in terms of raw dollars, as I demonstrated, it wasn’t true in terms of volume. More than twice the number of CD albums were sold than vinyl […]
This November 30 marks the 20th anniversary of the protests against meetings of the World Trade Organization that shut down the city of Seattle. It also marks the birthday of the Indymedia movement, which brought together grassroots media activists from public access TV, print, community radio and internet technology to create a radical open publishing […]
Podcasters wanting an inside look into how public radio and podcast experts evaluate new show ideas have an opportunity to peek under the hood of WNYC’s Podcast Accelerator Pitch Session. On Friday at 3:30 PM PDT the Online News Association will live stream the five Podcast Accelerator finalists giving their last pitches to the judges: […]
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 […]
Welcome to our new Wednesday feature, Digital Watch. Each week I’ll be tackling news and analysis about radio’s intersection with the digital world, online and off. This takes the place of Podcast Survivor, but it doesn’t mean podcasting coverage is going away. I’ll explain further at the end of this post. The week’s biggest news […]
iHeartMedia (née Clear Channel) CEO Bob Pittman and radio/TV host Ryan Seacrest were both present at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, and they were stumping for radio. Pittman began an on-stage interview on Wednesday declaring that “radio is probably the most relevant product that rides on all this technology… radio is your best friend.” […]
Antonio Cesar Guel and his Hispanic Christian Community Network have become infamous in low-power FM circles for their role in 245 applications for LPFM stations during last fall’s filing window–a full 8% of all 2,799 applications filed. LPFM advocacy groups and other applicants have filed informal objections and petitions to deny with the FCC claiming […]
Last fall I wrote “an immodest proposal” that independent and community stations should work more closely with independent musicians. With that in mind I was pleased to listen to the first episode of a new series from XRAY.fm in Portland, called “The Future of What?” focusing on the business of music. The show is hosted […]
It certainly seems like for the rest of the year I’ll be mentioning at least one or two press articles covering podcasting’s newfound popularity. However, I’ll focus on pieces that are notable, cover new ground, or suggest a novel angle. First, the New York Times’ inimitable media reporter and critic David Carr finally submits his […]
The business of podcasting continues to attract serious coverage, which I report here each week. This week coverage comes from the Columbia Journalism Review and PBS’s MediaShift. There’s good reason for this attention: the business of podcasting is booming. This is a good thing for listeners, producers, and even stations The CJR piece focuses exclusively […]
