B Story

Fast Company reports on the launch of "Radio Stream," a new product designed to allow local AM/FM broadcasters to insert targeted ads into their online and mobile streams, along with online couponing and social media integration.

The new product, which uses Apple's HTTP Live Streaming Protocol, is intended for "local radio stations wishing to air Pandora- and Spotify-style targeted ads," says Fast Company.

Radio Stream is made by mDialog, which has (so far) specialized in video advertising.

Fast Company's coverage is here.

Ken Dardis in Audio Graphics has introduced a new metric derived from Triton Digital's monthly Webcast Metrics numbers for Internet radio, which he says is a far more meaningful measure of audience changes than simply looking at "Average Active Sessions" or "Session Starts" alone.

He says looking at the "Percentage of Average Active Sessions Resulting from Stream Starts" is the best way to actually gauge the growth of an online radio audience.

The new metric came out of Dardis' contention that simply looking at "Average Active Sessions" doesn't take into account changes in Triton's panel of monitored webcasters, or changes within those webcasters themselves. Not only may Triton add or drop webcasters from those it monitors, but each broadcast group or webcaster may add or drop streams or channels available to listeners. Likewise, "Session Starts," according to Dardis, doesn't accurately differentiate between listeners tuning in and staying, and those who merely sample for a few moments then leave.

The key to really getting a sense of a webcaster's audience changes over time is his when Average Active Sessions (AAS) is expressed as a percentage of Session Starts (SS). When that derived figure increases, "people are hanging in there longer - and this figure has no attachment to whether Triton Digital added or lost client stations," he writes.

Dardis is compiling this statistic for Triton Digital Top 20 webcasters, and makes it available free every month here.

Read his explanation further here and here.

The new Justin Timberlake-backed Myspace went public early this year on the web. The site, now a social media site for artists and fans, has launched its new iPhone app, including its built-in Internet radio service.

The free streaming radio service boasts 53 million songs, with genre- and artist-based channels.

CNet describes the iPhone app's Net radio iteration: "Just as on the Web, Myspace's radio feature is ever-present, meaning you can start listening to songs and stations wherever you are in the application by swiping up to reveal the music menu. In addition, play buttons sit atop artist profiles and offer people personalized radio stations tuned to the tastes of that particular artist."

Myspace VP/product marketing Ali Tahmasbi told CNet: "When you play an artist radio station, you're not just listening to their music, but you're listening to what they're interested in and the music that inspires them. We think it really helps establish a stronger connection between artists and their fans."

Not their first go-round with online radio, MySpace launched a webcast service back in December of 2011 (see RAIN here).

CNet has more here.

You know Pandora is building its local sales forces with experienced radio AEs. The webcaster, Jacobs Media president Fred Jacobs writes today, is also working to show young professionals that it's a far cooler, friendlier, more exciting, and more vibrant place to work.

Check out Fred's Jacoblog today to see Pandora's three-minute video produced to convey just that message.

Whither radio? Radio used to be able to get away with offering low salaries and benefits because everyone wanted to be in radio. Today, radio's more likely to be announcing lay-offs than new rounds of hiring. And that's going to hurt radio's future.

"It’s a different world," Jacobs writes. "There’s not an endless supply of great people who want to work here."

Fred's even moving his company to a different office space he says will "reflect the changing nature of younger workers and their needs."

Here's some inspiration for him: Today Wired writes about the new launch of Herman Miller’s Public Office Landscape furniture system, and the response to it from Fuseproject (the design firm run by Yves Béhar) "to capture the spirit of our networked lives in a collection of chairs, desks, and space shaping components."

Read Jacobs' Jacoblog piece here and Wired here.

Clear Channel has struck yet another "on-air revenue share in exchange for decreased streaming royalty deal" with a sound recording rights holder, but this time, it isn't a music label group. It's Fleetwood Mac. The band.

CCM&E announced today its agreement with legendary recording artists Fleetwood Mac that will pay the band when Clear Channel radio stations play sound recordings owned by the band. In exchange, Clear Channel will nearly certainly enjoy a significant discount on its online royalty obligation.

The press release doesn't explicitly say, but it's likely that this deal applies only to the music on the band's new EP, "Extended Play." The band's other recordings, including legendary albums like "Rumours," "Tusk," and the self-titled 1975 album on which members Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks made their debut with the band, are likely still the property of the record labels for which they were recorded.

The new EP features the first recording of new Fleetwood Mac music in over a decade. Note that it was released by LMJS Productions (for Lindsey, Mick, John, Stevie).

The independent labels who have similar agreements with Clear Channel include Big Machine Label Group, Glassnote Entertainment Group, eOne, DashGo, Robbins Entertainment, Naxos, rpm Entertainment, Wind-up Records, Fearless Records, Zojak Records and Dualtone Records.

We're written several times about U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante's efforts to spur Congress to reform copyright law.

The usage, creation, and consumption of copyright material in 2013 is massively different than even 15 years ago, when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed -- the last major update to copyright law. Many of the concepts created even that recently no longer fit today's reality.

Streaming radio legal and royalties expert David Oxenford summarized some of Pallante's thinking today. He wrote of Pallante aims for updated copyright laws:

"Copyright owners must have the meaningful ability to protect the content that they create. But the public must also be able to access that content in a meaningful ways. Both creators and users of content have responsibilities to participate in the larger copyright economy to make sure that it functions properly."

He cited Pallante's call for "a full performance right in sound recordings," which we wrote about here. While we wrote specifically about a potential broadcast royalty obligation for sound recordings, Oxenford points out that Pallante's assertion could potentially mean sound recording royalties for "bars, restaurants, stadiums, and all other venues where recorded music is performed." (Like broadcast radio in the U.S., today these venues pay publishers and songwriters to publicly perform copyright song compositions, but not for recordings.)

There's more, and we recommend reading Oxenford's summary of Pallante's thinking in Broadcast Law Blog here.